


Starlight

by Flowerflamestars



Series: Daylight AU [2]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: 'He was the fire that cut through the dark', Azriel's canonical good looks, Chosen love, F/M, Flame and Shadow, Found Family, Gay Azriel, Let Elain say FUCK, Lucien's chaotic bisexual energy, Lucien's longing for a home, M/M, adoptive children, ignoring destiny, the buckwild feeling of falling in love during a war
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 07:41:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25347121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerflamestars/pseuds/Flowerflamestars
Summary: An older Azriel could look back and admit he’d been screwed the second Elain Archeron refused to leave behind that jacket.
Relationships: Azriel/Lucien Vanserra, Nesta Archeron/Cassian, past Cazriel
Series: Daylight AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1835599
Comments: 23
Kudos: 139





	1. We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven

An older Azriel could look back and admit he’d been screwed the second Elain Archeron refused to leave behind that jacket.  
  
Ashamed of the fact that he’d spent three days _fucking furious,_ before he’d gone to check on Feyre’s older sisters.  
  
Angry that Rhysand had hidden his bonding to Feyre- not because he’d missed a wedding, Az didn’t care- but because it would have changed every facet of their plan. A High Lady wasn’t a spy, she was a conflict obliterating _hostage_. Had he forgotten Azriel had more than half a dozen people on the ground already?  
  
There was no reason to send the co-head of their entire government across enemy lines and leave her there.  
  
But Rhys was furious right back- and an angry High Lord listened about as well as an absent one. For the first time in five centuries, Azriel, for just a _second_ , missed the first ruthless man he’d served: Rhain, Rhysand’s father, who’d no more gamble with what mattered than lower his head to a lesser man.  
  
Three days, and Cassian groaning awake out of his coma trying to say Nesta Archeron’s name.  
  
The second thing he said, already trying to stagger to his feet and stretch, was, “You’re so pissed I can _smell_ _it_ \- Az, are you okay?”  
  
And just like that, Azriel had sighed what felt like his first full breath in days.  
  
“Am I _okay_?” He propped Cassian up on a mound of pillows. “Your wings are more stitches than skin right now, lie down.”

Cassian, despite lacking a single shred of self-preservation, listened. Accepted the gentle push, the stinging astringent taste of the tea that remained after centuries, the single best painkiller that actually worked on Illyrian bodies.  
  
“Thanks, Azzy,” Cassian slurred eventually, visible tension draining from his bandage covered body. He fumbled to squeeze Azriel’s wrist, and just a little bit of the frozen anger locked in his veins thawed. “Wha’ happened?”  
  
There was no other person alive Azriel could tell the entire truth to.  
  
Rhysand didn’t want to hear it, Amren preferred to draw her own conclusions, Morrigan’s priorities were wholly different- but Cassian, family and friend and everything in between, by-product of the same brutal training, would always understand.  
  
And the bastard was so stubborn that even drugged out of his mind Cassian was going to resist sleep until certain everything was okay.  
  
One bloodshot hazel eye watched as Azriel sighed again.  
  
So he told him.  
  
That Cassian had almost lost his life, his wings, what he loved most, protecting him. That half the power of their Court was settled on _Feyre,_ who was gone. That Rhys wasn’t going to _allow him_ to get her back. That her sisters were here, transformed- the Cauldron’s power had ripped a hole in the world with their making and still the wind shook with it, keening.  
  
Rather than give in- _rather than rest after several days on the brink of death_ \- Cassian cracked open both of his eyes. “They’re at the House of Wind?”  
  
Morrigan had bundled them up in Shahar’s old quarters without a second thought, no doubt imagining it befitted their status. The royal wing, dreaming silver and blue, wide open windows to the sky for an heir born of two worlds. Beauty that would shelter them- Azriel was going to have to remind himself and Rhysand both that they hadn’t asked for it.  
  
“ _Wh_ \- why am I at the townhouse?” He said it with such exhausted gravitas, Azriel took a second to listen. _Why am I at the townhouse- why am I not wherever in the world that she is?_

Nothing had changed in what the shadow whispered here, as it had for three long days and nights.  
_  
Her heart stopped- stopped, felt it stop- she’s dead she’s dead she’s dead- Nesta Nesta Nesta- heart stopped-  
_  
Nesta Archeron, who her sister treated like a dangerous, wounded animal. A woman who’d raised her head high and stood between Elain and the threat Feyre had brought unannounced to their home.  
  
Cassian had looked at her beautiful, furious face and thought so loudly the air sang with it: _Illyrian.  
_  
He might not have seen that himself, but Azriel liked her from the minute she’d looked at Rhysand and refuse to so much as shake his hand. She’d cursed the King of Hybern with her last breath- Azriel knew what it was to look like one thing but be another, to have nothing left in all the world but your love and pride.  
  
Her own merit was enough- but Azriel would protect her to his last breath, for Cassian.  
  
Cassian, whose guileless, heavily intoxicated stare still wanted answers. “Because you were _dying._ It took Madja’s entire team hours just to put you back together before you tipped from fever to coma.”  
  
Azriel reached for Cassian’s shoulder, gentle touch on tattooed skin stopping the scowl.

“ _I know_ ,” Azriel went on quietly, “You really cannot move, but I’ll go.”  
  
He was ashamed he hadn’t already, the burn of it instant.  
  
Shame that grew hand in hand with how vociferously angry Azriel found himself at his High Lord- Rhysand knew better, Rhysand _was_ better- when he arrived at the House of Wind to find Amren and a locked door.  
  
Neatly crossed legged on the floor, Amren silently took his hand to rise, motion liquid. “How long?”  
  
A trail of multi-colored diamonds brushed her shoulder as Amren cocked her head, aware perhaps that Azriel was on edge of his control. “Since Morrigan winnowed them in. There’s a stocked kitchen, I’ve been listening.”  
  
That Amren had apparently not moved for three days was not the surprising part. “They haven’t come out?”  
  
“One weeps,” She told him, “She’s touching everything she can reach. The other- _the angry one_ \- she’s been out on the balcony, face to wind since dawn.”  
  
Face to wind, gods damn them all.  
  
Rhysand should have been here. He was their _brother in law,_ the closest thing to family that they had. If just for Feyre’s sake- it might have been complicated between the sisters, but they loved each other completely. It was his _duty- should have been his honor.  
_  
It was the only right thing.  
  
“You could have opened the door,” Azriel hedged.  
  
Like the viper that she was, Amren smiled, “Not without breaking it. Home and futures lost, I’m not going to take away their privacy as well.”  
_  
Home, futures, fortune, bodies_ \- it was their fault, all their damned fault.  
  
Cassian had fought Rhys for three days over Feyre’s plan; bringing the war to someone else’s doorstep, a completely unprotected, unprepared territory. Azriel had wanted the fact that _no one_ could go to the Palace of the Queens without getting captured or worse acknowledged- that didn’t mean he thought endangering Feyre’s only living family made a shred of sense.  
  
It had been the wrong play, even if the Queens hadn’t betrayed them.  
  
A stupid, horrible risk; one that had cost these two women everything. They deserved better than to be abandoned in a foreign realm.  
  
“Azriel,” Amren murmured, as he strode toward the door. “Be careful with them.” He inclined his head in answer but she went on, mercury gaze shifting, “ _Especially_ the angry one.”  
  
Before Amren could finish walking away, before Azriel even touched the door to knock, it opened from the inside.  
  
Elain Archeron stood barefoot in the doorway, swallowed up by a fine faery gown and larger green coat wrapped overtop of it. Vanserra’s- the scent of fire like a beacon, light that punched through the dark.  
  
“You’re on time,” She whispered, musical voice soft. Her dark eyes didn’t quite fix on Azriel, strangely out of focus as she stared both at and through him. “The sun would rise and he would wake and you would come.”  
  
Amren had stopped walking.  
  
Worse than shame, a sick burning certainty clenched in Azriel’s chest. Wings tucked tight, small as he could make himself, he said to Elain. “Yes, I’m here.”  
  
Cloud of wild, nearly white curls bobbing, Elain nodded. Reached out a shining pale High Fae finger to touch the back of his scarred hand, and laughed. _“You are.”  
_  
Amen’s voice even as a soft hiss, was a league more sure and sound, _“Azriel._ ”  
  
Featherlight, Elain’s wandering hand hooked beneath his siphon gauntlet- _the shadows were gone, the air was keening_ \- he needed to go with her. “Don’t let anyone else in. Lock down the whole House.”  
  
A sign that Amren had guessed too- she’d listened for three days- the usual sharp indictment that _she didn’t take orders_ didn’t appear. Instead, meeting his gaze as Azriel looked over his shoulder at her, Amren nodded.  
  
Watched, as he did, Elain Archeron staring into blank nothingness and cocking her head, as though listening.  
  
With a snap, sudden and crystal clear as High Fae moving without temperance could be, Elain pulled Azriel through the doorway and slammed it shut in a blur of speed.  
  
“ _The dark_ ,” She hissed, sharp faery teeth bared, “He’s coming. _It hurts._ ”  
  
Lightening strike them, mountains crumble to _dust._  
  
Rhys should have cared enough to be here.  
  
It should have been Morrigan, who’d fought the entire first war side by side with human women, who’d know what had changed. Cassian, who’d known mortals, whose whole body and soul would be a lightening rod to any of Nesta Archeron’s distress.  
  
It was Azriel, and he wouldn’t walk away.  
  
He made it three steps into the cool, agonizing temple to the Night sky that was these rooms, before Nesta Archeron stopped him.  
  
Tiny, angry as a wildfire- no amount of the Cauldron’s power that had rendered her a fearsome immortal had made her less frightfully delicate, smaller even than the sister she got right into Azriel’s space to physically shield. “Has my sister returned?”  
  
The air shuddered.  
  
There was no one alive who’d ever seen the Cauldron before this, much less known what it could do. They looked High Fae, _moved like High Fae,_ but the unsteady power that radiated from these two women wanted to eat the world.  
  
“No,” Azriel said, careful not to move, trying not to loom, “But Feyre has been in contact with Rhys.”  
  
“She’s not coming back?”  
  
Elain began to sing in a clear sweet voice, _the roses run red, the roses run red, Spring will grow and Spring will weep until all have bled, roses run red-  
_  
Azriel grimaced. “No. She has…chosen not to return until her goals are met.”  
  
Nesta Archeron’s scoff ended in a growl, the flesh rending noise appearing to be as much a surprise to her as it was Azriel. She startled, reigned it in, posture perfect and face exhausted.  
Together, they watched as Elain wandered away, placed her palms on the vividly blue gilded wall.  
  
Like it was instinct, like she’d done it a thousand times, Nesta Archeron angled her body to block as much of her sister, still singing of blood and blooming betrayal, as possible.  
  
Looked up at Azriel in pure aggression, and asked, “So why are you here?”  
  
He thought about saying, _your sister is my High Lady, and so I serve you as well._ He considered, _are you okay?_ He cursed, imagined, _the things Elain speaks to, do they look like smoke?  
_  
“Cassian is awake,” Azriel said, still looking at Elain. “He’ll make a full recovery.”  
  
Nesta’s rigid posture didn’t change, but the shadows crowded Azriel’s senses, _screaming._  
  
What had it been like for her? Azriel had only learned the story from Cassian in fever cried pieces and dark that couldn’t lie: he’d already been unconscious in a pool of his own blood when the bond snapped- _freefall, sunlight, an ocean of fire._

Azriel himself had been out cold, had no way to judge what had happened when Hybern dragged Feyre’s sisters to their deaths.  
  
The bond became, Nesta died with her heart beating in Cassian’s chest, and fought the Cauldron so hard the world tore on her soul’s way back to his.  
_  
Was it anything but pain?  
_  
Nesta said nothing.  
  
And Azriel cursed himself because- because he could hope for Cassian’s sake, he could be here, but who was he to tell her _anything?  
_  
Elain stopped singing, stopped moving, staring into nothing.  
  
Shoulders visibly, painfully tight- _she didn’t want him here to see this_ \- Nesta, with a horrific, practiced ease, walked to her sister. Took both her hands and led Elain to sit, falling into cushions with an unseeing sigh.  
  
Nesta caught him watching.  
  
“She’s _unwell,_ ” Nesta hissed. “She’s not- it’s _magic._ ”  
  
Someone had said otherwise, and Azriel was going to _throttle_ them.  
  
He held up his hands, tried to seem as nonthreatening as possible. Throat bare, wings tucked tight- her mind wouldn’t recognize it, but her body was hardwired to see it: the answer to dominance, the way faeries made clear what couldn’t be said in words.  
  
How High Fae acknowledged power.  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with her,” Azriel said, and only then did Nesta’s ferocious scowl falter. “It _is_ magic- it took me decades, to learn.”  
  
“She’s…like you?”  
  
The careful way she said it twisted through the air, tasting like desperation.  
  
Azriel wished he could give her a clear answer. That one existed. “I don’t know. There’s many gifts, that would give someone…extra senses. What she’s seeing or hearing is real.”  
  
“I know _that._ ”  
  
When he didn’t say more, Nesta made another growling noise and crossed her arms tight.  
  
“There’s a study,” she snarled, “Through there. I went through it on the second day, when it became clear no one was coming. Papers and plans and books on magic- she’s not stroking walls like a madwomen, she’s locating the keystones of the wards.”  
  
Every inch of this place, designed by Shahar. Of course the plans were still there- had any of them ever been able to bear walking in before?  
  
The safest place in the damned kingdom.  
  
Heart of palace, Rhain had joked. Warding in the floors and walls, windows and ceilings. A veritable fortress Rhysand’s sister had remade into a work of art, a haven for her bright soul.  
  
It would guard them well.  
  
For a woman who’d probably never known the word _ward_ before this week, Nesta spoke with absolute confidence. And she was right.  
_  
The dark,_ Elain had said, _he’s coming.  
_  
“She’s afraid.”  
  
Unnervingly quick, Nesta nodded. “At night.”  
  
Azriel remembered. Because the dark isn’t just the absence of light- it was alive. Moved and spoke and _touched_ , a hundred thousand reaching, excited, hungry voices. It had been terror long before it had been comfort.  
  
Desperate, claustrophobic horror.  
  
“If you need anything,” Azriel said, carefully, “If she’s _gone_ too long, send for me.”  
  
It looked like she had to force the words out but, “It could be dangerous? For her?”  
_  
Burning_ \- burning shame, Azriel nodded.  
  
“How do I,” The words were halting, Nesta’s jaw clenched tight, “How do I get word to you? I won’t leave Elain.”  
  
Proud- her pride was the only thing keeping her upright. But she wouldn’t accept help, not for herself. Only for Elain, who’d need it, Azriel feared, direly.  
  
“I’ll return?” He made sure it was a question, waited for her cool nod. “Tomorrow.”  
  
Abruptly, a statue moving, Elain stood. Moved faster than eyes could track to stand before Azriel again.  
  
Nesta swore, _soft and foul_ \- gods, Cassian was going to love her with the force of a falling star for that beautiful voice alone- and startled.  
  
Azriel didn’t flinch, but that didn’t stop his absolute puzzlement as Elain very gently wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed. She smelled like something soft, infinitesimal: summer rainwater, ocean fog.  
  
Stronger: the heady scent of Lucien Vanserra on that oversized coat, flames so thick they burned Azriel’s throat.  
  
“He’s coming,” Elain crooned happily, face pressed over leather. “Never going to die on the ground.”  
  
Over her head, frozen in her grip, Azriel met Nesta Archeron’s huge, horrified eyes.  
  
It was what would linger, haunting him: Nesta’s fear, Elain’s certainty, the scent of that damned jacket, clinging to his skin, his _senses,_ long after.  
  


***

Azriel was not just the only shadowsinger alive.  
  
He was the first Illyrian shadowsinger ever: the last member of a darkly gifted class that hadn’t been reborn for thousands of years. Immortality didn’t matter. There was no mentor, no other being like him.  
  
Because Shadowsingers lived short, violent lives in secret.  
  
Arcane knowing traded for irrefutable place- the last four shadowsingers had belonged to the High Lords of Night, and so too would Azriel, in the end.  
  
But long, long before that, Rhysand was too-clean shining hair and cruelly curious purple eyes, watching the wisps of shadow clinging to Azriel in the sparring ring, out of control and painfully other.  
  
He’d met Cassian first, but that didn’t yet mean they were _friends._ Cas still thrashed Rhysand in training on a daily basis, more comfortable proving he could beat even a High Lords son than watching anyone else’s back.  
  
Until Azriel.  
  
Cassian was the first Illyrian Az had ever met who was as strong as he was. Who struggled for control every minute of every day, their ferociously young bodies overflowing with power that wanted to level mountains.  
  
Rhysand might have been a face to drag through mud before he’d ever been a friend- but Cassian had seen Azriel and Azriel had seen Cassian, and they’d known each other from the start. _Inseparable._

Cassian’s protection and the looming threat of a High Lord who wanted his gifts were the only reasons Azriel wasn’t killed outright when it became apparent he couldn’t fly.  
  
But he could fight.  
  
Spent hours in the ring with Cassian, until the horrifying instincts meshed with physical motion, the frantic clawing in his blood to _move_ shimmering down _.  
_  
Cassian tended to ignore that Rhys was right there, and Azriel followed his lead.  
  
He knew the face of the man he’d follow once he was trained: the High Lord Rhain had shown up at the dungeon that was Azriel’s childhood home the day he was freed.  
  
Touched Azriel’s face with one impossibly pale, cold hand to heal the sun blindness from his dazzled eyes. Ignored Azriel’s groveling father- _curtseying, obeisant stepmother singing prayers of family honor_ \- and told Azriel he was one of a kind.  
  
That he had five years to grow strong, and the High Houses of Night would ask much from him, but Rhain could promise this: Azriel would never be caged again.  
  
It was laughable, to compare that cool absolute majesty to Rhysands hatefully scrunched little face.  
  
Just a year younger, but lagging behind Illyrian growth spurts with his mixed blood, Rhysand was small and _furious_ , quick to lash out at the world that seemed to confound him at each turn.  
  
The shadows were harder to understand then, a thousand voices too eager to speak, tumbling over one another. All the darkness around Rhysand sang with _longing._ He missed his home, his tutors, his father he hadn’t seen in years.  
  
He was jealous, and it was so bewildering Azriel didn’t understand the burn of the feeling until Rhysand actually started speaking to him.  
  
It started with notable horror, like this:  
  
Another windswept frozen day, the howling mountain air erupting goosebumps over Azriel’s shoulders despite his sweaty skin. Their instructors had long since abandoned trying to pair off Azriel with anyone but Cassian- _faulty control,_ they whispered, _at least that one can stop him-_ and Rhysand was predictably watching, waiting his turn.  
  
They were seventeen.  
  
The world was bigger than the summer sky, but nothing felt as vast as Cassian’s enormous laugh, echoing in delight after Azriel had managed to pummel him straight to the ground. He’d earned aching bruised ribs and a split lip for his trouble, but Azriel smiled back.  
  
Until Rhys drawled from the boards, voice failing to drop to the smooth depth he seemed to be trying to master. “Aren’t you meant to bleed _black,_ Az? Isn’t that what makes you a _shadow?_ ”  
  
He said _shadow_ like an Illyrian Lord might _bastard._ Azriel for a brief second wanted to sink into the ground at the thought that someday- some awful, infinite day- Rhain would die, and Azriel’s life would belong to this little prick.  
  
And then Cassian kissed him.  
  
Soft as a whisper, the gentlest touch in Azriel’s entire life up until that moment.  
  
The shadows themselves were confused, tangled. _Please, it’s okay, I’m sorry, can I?  
_  
And then Azriel was fumbling, reaching to touch the nape of Cassian’s neck and impossibly- Cassian was kissing him again. But it was heat and barely contained strength- _Cassian, the strongest of any of them, Cassian who would never, ever hurt him for real_ \- blunt Illyrian teeth against his bottom lip- it felt like heaven and hurt and Azriel liked that too-  
  
Until Cassian pulled away, bloody and beautiful, to sneer at the boy who’d one day be a man they had to follow. “Red blood. He bleeds red because he’s an _Illyrian.”_

Five hundred years of friendship later, Cassian still identified Azriel as Illyrian first. No matter that he hated those cold mountains, refused to return if he could help it- it was a compliment, a shared brotherhood. 

They belonged to the glorious open sky, understood without words what it meant.  
  
Rhysand still said Shadowsinger first. But it wasn’t an insult- a gift, a treasure, an impossible to quantify value to the Court they both loved- even if Azriel was only good with shadows because he’d learned first to understand the wind.  
  
Neither was wrong.  
  
He was both. He was neither. Azriel was himself, alone, as it had always been.  


***

Once, in centuries past, Azriel had been bold enough to ask why Rhysand- oldest son, most powerful of his bloodline, purple-eyed little shit that he was- was being raised in the Illyrian Mountains instead of Night’s tempestuous capital, or the High Lord’s glittering seaside home.  
  
Rhain, as he never hesitated to do, told the truth. 

“My son,” Rhain said, “Will never rule. It is the only gift I can give him.” The High Lord had smiled, purple eyes dark as night, “I know he hates me for it.”  
  
Azriel had rolled over the words, thinking about control.  
  
It was the central, oppositional tenet of Illyrian might. To be an Illyrian was to love; for love was freedom and love was promise. No skyborn creature could live without the heavens, no Illyrian could exist without a sword in their hand and ties of golden fidelity to guide them.  
  
But to survive- not just in the war camps, to grow to adulthood- an Illyrian must have control.  
  
Not necessarily for the violent instincts of clawing, grasping need to move, to fly, _to not be alone-  
_  
Control was needed, so that their very power didn’t kill them. Centuries of mixing warrior bloodlines between what had once been distinct clans, the edict of building a High Lord’s army shaping each new generation until their killing strength had become a time bomb. _  
_  
“It is a matter of cost.”  
  
Azriel was careful with his words, always. He’d been swept away to grandeur of the Nightmare City for months now, airless dark and diamond horror. Rhain had made it clear that while Azriel served, his place was beside the throne, not before it.  
  
After all, how else could he deliver truth from madness, if he were not allowed to speak freely?  
  
The High Lord had hummed in agreement. “Indeed. Shahar will play the game and win. Rhys- my Rhysand, would rule with his entire heart until it destroyed him. He’d let it, bear any cost. It is the makings of a story, not a great ruler.”  
  
Azriel would spend five hundred years helping Rhysand bear that cost.  
  
But he couldn’t help but think, in the aftermath of Hybern, looking at Rhysand’s haunted face, that Rhain had been right- and it had been a kindness.  
  
Feyre had been a gone a week, and Rhysand was wasting away.  
  
When he wasn’t flying past their borders, into enemy territory, gathering information they had an army of soldiers and a legion of spies to handle. 

A High Lord with a death wish, a High Lady fomenting rebellion, and the Archeron sisters were still yet to leave the House of Wind.  
  
Having exhausted- there was anger, and then there was what Azriel felt, the fucking burn that _they had a war to fight_ \- the first and second of those issues, he’d moved on to the last.  
  
It had taken Cassian all of ten hours after waking to try to get to Nesta. Azriel had ended up half-carrying him the last minutes of a flight he could have made dead drunk in good health, Cassian’s entire body shaking with strain.  
  
He’d yell at him, when Azriel was done being afraid a harsh wind would be his death.  
  
Rhys, in a week, hadn’t set foot in the House.  
  
Predictably, the second Azriel got him there, things went to hell.  
  
Cassian was already present, as he was every day. For all that his strength was returning slowly, Cassian’s color grew healthier with each silent hour by Nesta Archeron’s side. They didn’t seem to speak- Azriel knew well how much could be said in silence- and so long as Cassian’s quiet lingered, Nesta always opened the door.  
  
Left it unlocked.  
  
It must have been open, for Morrigan stood on the threshold, an armload of gowns slung over her shoulder, calling merrily into the high-ceilinged antechamber. “Hello, Archerons!”  
  
Seated motionless, a distinct arms length from Cassian, the teacup in Nesta’s hand _crunched._ The shadows sang it, but Azriel knew: _too loud._ The sister bodies had been remade; everything was too loud, too bright, too clear.  
  
Morrigan danced through life like an incendiary on her dullest days.  
  
Slow- Nesta was forcing her body to move at human speed, the pain of it obvious- graceful, the oldest Archeron twisted on the velvet couch, until very carefully her back was to Cassian and her eyes on Azriel, the shadow behind Morrigan.  
  
High Fae instincts, a lock in a key. Faeries did not turn their backs on those that could hurt them.  
  
Easily visible over Nesta’s head, Cassian’s entire face had crumbled, bright-eyed and wretched.  
  
Rhysand stepped across the threshold to shuddering wards. _Left her alone, left her alone, threw her away,_ the shadows groaned, whatever dark that wasn’t shying away from the singular look of fury on Nesta’s Archeron’s face.  
  
“I don’t believe I invited you in.”  
  
She smelled like power- like a challenge. _A faery for a week, Rhysand,_ Azriel swore silently, uncaring if it reached his Lord or not, _don’t fucking-  
_  
Rhysand tucked his hands in his pockets and smiled, cold. “It is my House, Lady Archeron.”  
_  
“Rhys,”_ Cassian groaned, but Nesta was already on her feet.  
  
“We would be perfectly happy to leave, if soldiers after my sister hadn’t burned our home to ground. My Lord.”  
_  
Arrogant, worthless, lying bastard, going to get my sister killed-  
_  
Mor chose that moment to dance forward with a dazzling smile. “Yes! Which is exactly why I brought you some things. Feyre likes pants, but I went with dresses for you two? Both have such wonderful figures, I mean”- She cut herself off with a laugh that made Nesta visibly narrow her eyes. “Hello, Nesta. Is Elain around too?’  
  
Utterly silent, not even the phantom wind of power spent, Elain Archeron walked out of nothing several inches from Morrigan’s face.  
  
Winnowed, straight through the wards and ancient blood magic.  
_  
“Fuck,_ ” Mor spit, before course correcting back to a smile, “I- hello, Elain.”

Cassian unsteadily rose as Nesta stormed to her sisters side, utterly uncaring for Morrigan’s space as she grabbed her sisters hand. Nesta squeezed, Elain squeezed back, and Azriel grabbed Rhysand’s wrist in warning as the keening power between the two of them proved enough for Morrigan to back away.  
  
They weren’t doing it on purpose- Azriel didn’t think, for all of Nesta’s frantic reading, they even knew what happened when they stood together. 

Power, raw and hungry. 

Azriel had a Illyrian body and shadow’s soul- these women were High Fae in form, but nothing, _nothing_ he could sense inside them wasn’t _other.  
_  
The Cauldron made the world as they knew it. What happened when a whole world’s eternity filled the lungs of two mortals, remade them down to bones and blood?  
  
Feyre had been reborn of the Courts of Prythian. She was the child of their every magic, indescribably unique and utterly vital. Her sisters- who’d asked for none of this, who’d lost everything- had been made from something older, whatever had come before.  
  
Primordial power _,_ and it was setting off Rhysand’s instincts like a knife to the throat.  
  
After a long, awkward pause, Mor slung the dresses down over the back of a chair. “Elain, these are for you. Here, Nesta.”  
  
Nesta didn’t so much as glance at the smaller, darker pile, eyes on Elain, whose face had very suddenly lost its dreamlike quality.  
  
In a voice that sounded _much_ more like Nesta, rather than the light lost song Azriel had heard from her before, Elain said: “Are they… _all_ pink?”  
  
Mor blinked. “Feyre said it was your favorite color? Like peonies?” She stepped forward, digging through the monstrous pile. “Here, this one’s yellow! And the ribbon, see? And this one has embroidered sleeves? Warm. You can finally take off that jacket.”  
  
Her final laugh echoed.  
  
A perfect picture of manners, Elain inclined her head.  
  
Which Mor apparently thought was an invitation, reaching to grab the careworn velvet shoulder of the damned thing- trying to, until Elain caught her hand before she could make contact. _“No._ Thank you.”  
  
Mor grimaced another smile. “That’s fine! No, of course, I should be going. Cas, walk down to the city with me.”  
  
It wasn’t a question as Cassian smiled back automatically, rubbing at his unshaven jaw.

Distantly, Azriel was glad the bastard wasn’t going to try to fly a second time today, but presently, the shadows were invisibly twisting on themselves as Mor looped both her hands around Cassian’s arm and tugged, leading him with bright chatter out of the room.  
  
Nesta dropped her gaze to the dresses.  
  
“Please let me know if there is absolutely anything that you require,” Rhysand promised in his own parting, with a bow.  
  
Leaving Azriel alone with both sisters lucid for the first time.  
  
Elain sighed, scooted closer to Nesta. “Are they all sheer?”  
  
Frozen, Nesta replied without looking up. “Yes. I’m sure it’s quite- very _fashionable_ , but”-  
  
Azriel identified the lurch in her tone that was coming off as arch- _ferocious discomfort._ Of this body. Of it on display. Low necklines, split skirts, gleaming sheer brocade. Morrigan had given Nesta whatever she thought was beautiful, forgetting how humans dressed.  
  
“And you’re _allergic_ to peonies.”  
  
Elain laughed. “I’m also six years past majority, do you see how many of these come with hair ribbons?” She turned to Azriel. “Are faery ages so _very_ different?”  
  
Unable to help himself, Azriel coughed a laugh of his own. “No. Mor may have…based her choices on Feyre?”  
  
He wanted to ask- _when you winnow, is the world a dark place that sings? Do the voices come for you when the sun goes down? Does the stone hum and the sky ache?  
_  
A pair of eyes somehow nearly the same and utterly dissimilar to his young High Lady swung to Azriel’s face.  
  
“Feyre.” Nesta said. “When is she coming back?”  
_  
She is safe,_ the lie was on the tip of his tongue. Feyre was playing cat and mouse with a lunar priestess, a High Lord, and awaiting the arrival of two of Hyberns most favored Generals. “When her mission is complete. Rhys will know, and I will go myself to see her back safely.”  
  
Elain dropped the dress in her hand.  
  
It was only because he was already looking that Azriel saw the spasm of pain across Nesta’s expression before her face smoothed back in fearsome stillness.  
  
“ _Liar_ ,” Elain sighed, soft as a dream. She melted forward. “ _Truth-teller._ He can burn green wood but it hurts his eyes.”  
  
“The green wood is in a green land?”  
  
Elain closed her eyes. “The moon is lying.”  
  
At the actual answer, Nesta startled.  
  
From still to blurring fast in less than a heart beat, Elain unbuttoned her borrowed coat and shoved it against Azriel’s chest. “There is a _fire. The sun is a fire._ Keep it safe."  
  
And then she fainted.  
  
Azriel caught her one-armed, a hairsbreadth before Nesta crashed into him attempting the same thing. Together- silently- they placed Elain on the couch where Nesta had been sitting with Cassian. Azriel didn’t try to do so himself as would have been easy, didn’t have the heart to detach Nesta’s unneeded, worried grip.  
  
It wasn’t until she’d carefully brushed Elain’s hair from her face and tucked a pillow beneath her head that Nesta spoke.  
  
Hissed, hauling Azriel away from her prone sister with force that seemed absurd even for a High Fae considering her size, “ _What is happening to her_? Tell me. Tell me what you know.”  
  
Azriel was _so fucking tired._

“I don’t know,” He said, honestly.  
_  
“Do not lie to me.”_

“I do not,” Azriel crossed his arms, and wearily once more, met Nesta’s desperate gaze. “I cannot see what she’s seeing until she learns to share it. All I hear- Elain is looking for something. Instead, I believe she’s seeing Spring.”  
  
“Where Feyre is?”  
  
Nesta spit her name, and Azriel for all that his first and foremost instinct was to defend his Lady, couldn’t fault her. That rage was a truly dangerous thing, but so was Azriel. So was their whole world, and Nesta might just need her anger to survive what was coming.  
  
He nodded instead.  
  
Wished Cassian had stayed. That Morrigan hadn’t reached with both hands, that Azriel alone didn’t have to say every horrible true thing.  
  
“It was agony,” He said, wishing even more that Nesta didn’t have to know, “That made her faint. Not power.” Azriel had eyes on Feyre every moment of every day, but not on him. Not the man who’d broken Hybern’s binding to rush to Elain’s side, the brightest, most perilous flame Autumn had ever produced. “Somewhere, Lucien Vanserra is hurt.”  
  
Nesta gripped her skirt in both hands, knuckles flashing bone white. “She can _feel his pain?_ ”

All Azriel could do was incline his head.  
  
He had the grace to leave without lingering long enough to make Nesta throw him out. There was nothing else to say, and Azriel found himself back in the long, fire lit hall between one breathe and the next, the cavern of the carved ceiling dark overhead.  
  
Still clutched in one hand, the brush of worn velvet caught on his armor, the scent of sparks escaping to the sky. 


	2. Tell me how all this, and love, will ruin us too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucien Vanserra, a valuable player in the game. Lucien Vanserra, in his own head: a flawed, dangerous burden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: brief, nonsexual, nonconsensual touching in the first section.

Lucien Vanserra was on fire.  
 _  
No, he was fire._ Lucien was the flame of the forest and bleeding red of the Hunters moon. He was the goddamn fire, _not the pain,_ and he was going to burn the High Priestess of Spring to fucking bone if she didn’t stop touching him.  
  
It was an effort, to open his eyes.  
  
Inathe wasn’t even pretending to be looking over the freshly accumulated whip marks that rended muscle and skin down his back. Stroking his uninjured shoulder, the tips of her polished nails lingering, catching on the thin fabric of Lucien’s ruined shirt.  
 _  
Lucien was going to cut off her fucking hands.  
_   
About the same time he thought it clearly, head ringing with agony, Inathe noticed he was awake.   
  
“Find succor,” She purred, blue eyes burning. “Harsh justice makes just men.”  
  
Lucien spit blood on the perfect Spring-white flagstones. “I have asked you _not_ to touch me.”  
  
Inathe retracted her hand. Held them both to her heart, eyes cast down to show off the shadowed expanse of full lips and dark lashes to their fullest extent. “My lord,” Lucien was not a gods damned lord, _he’d never be one,_ “I am but a holy vessel. When my hands reach it is the Mother who offers comfort.”  
  
He wanted to growl, _I’m Autumn.  
_  
If there was even a single good thing Beron had done in his whole, monstrous life, it was keeping the Priestesses of the Mother out of Autumn. The Forest of Bone kept the ways of old, bowed only to the might of the Cauldron and spared respect for ancient, hungry trees- there was no place for insipid, continental worship under the rising moon.

Lucien hadn’t set foot beneath those trees in more than two centuries.

Tam had pledged victory over Amarantha to the Mother, and in had swept Priestesses who’d hidden from her long reach. Wanted the Court to once again be _courtly,_ so Lucien couldn’t take a single step without running into a sneering, plotting High Fae courtiers, or this revolting bitch.

“I do not pray,” He ground out, rising to his feet.

The motion tore back open whatever healing had began while Lucien was unconscious- it didn’t matter, besides clotting, besides ruining clothing- wounds from a faebane tipped whip wouldn’t heal fully for weeks.

More.  
  
But it had been worth it, to terrorize those vicious, insane pricks Tam had allowed into their home. Hybernian Generals on Spring soil. Monsters- and Lucien was an expert on monsters.

He’d been raised by one.  
  
Ianthe was laughing, that tinkling, utterly fake chime that never ceased to make Feyre- Feyre who while foolish, was surely smarter than this- happy.

“Oh, you joke! But of course you pray,” She blinked those enormous eyes. Lucien thought about blinding her. “You are a Spring Lord, no? We of the bounty, here in the blooming heart of the Mother.”  
  
A warning. A threat.  
  
Lucien was so tired his bones ached.  
  
A lesser faerie would be dead. A lesser faerie wouldn’t have had the dubious honor of being flayed by the full strength of the High Lord of Spring _himself.  
_   
“ _I do not believe_ ,” Lucien growled, the burr of his Autumn accent abruptly overwhelming and homey, desperately painful. “ _Not in you, not in your games, not in your goddess._ Get out of my way.”

He’d be punished for it.  
  
He’d be in trouble for it- but bleeding, hurting, so furious it felt like if he let go for even a second the fire in his blood would burn down the world- Lucien felt it was worth it. What else could be taken? A faery without a home. A High Lord’s son without a homeland. A Vanserra outside the forest.  
  
Lucien had only his life, and he was too useful to be allowed to die.

***

Elain Archeron slipped away between dusk and dawn, shadows keening as she went.  
  
Az, not sleeping, but not exactly awake either, snapped to attention hunched over his desk and closed his eyes. Followed the darkness down deeper than he’d normally dare, listened as whispers turned liquid, as voices were drowned in an endless tide.  
  
Slipped from the present with the ease of a stone sinking to the bottom of a lake.  
  
Drawn into her natural element, by the heart of her power, beyond the reach current day. One foot in the past. One foot in the present. _Drowning.  
_   
Not a shadowsinger.  
 _  
A shadow.  
_  
A remnant that couldn’t be contained, lost in a sea of power Azriel couldn’t see or comprehend.

The second sign everything had gone to shit- _gone to shit, and he hadn’t stopped it, he should have never left her alone, not for a single second_ \- was Cassian, arms crossed, barefoot, alighted on the Archeron sister’s balcony and staring down a bolted door.  
  
Azriel let himself taste the air. Listen.  
  
And there was the maelstrom Cassian lived in, keening- _she’s hurt, she’s dead, she’s-_ a razor sharp, distinctive pain that had pulled him from slumber. Nesta Archeron was in trouble. Nesta Archeron was hurting, and Cassian was thinking about breaking down her door.  
 _  
“Cas.”  
_  
Cassian rubbed a hand over his jaw, burning gaze unmoved from the glass and oak doorway. “Don’t say it.”  
  
The wards were up. 

Either Nesta Archeron had read enough of Shahar’s long abandoned books- the very best, the carefully tailored education of a ravenous, powerful, future High Lady- and somehow taught herself to _bend_ them, found a way to touch wards written by another in sparse weeks- or.

Or the House, an ancient half-living entity, watchful and loving, had felt the teeming power of these two women who didn’t leave its walls, and _given over its mastery._

“We need Amren.”  
  
“We do _not_ ,” Cassian grumbled. “Are you kidding? Do you want to wake her up for this?”  
  
Unfortunately, he had a point. And Amren had made herself clear- no matter what, she would not be a part of taking anything, even the smallest choice, from these two already suffering women.  
  
Cassian’s glare was heated enough to melt stone. “Rhys is going to lose his shit.”  
  
Shadow didn’t need to tell Azriel the source of that lingering note, fear hiding behind frustration in the fury of Cassian’s hazel eyes.  
  
“ _Cas_ ,” Azriel said again, and waited until he actually looked. “I won’t let him.”  
  
“It wouldn’t matter,” Cassian said, ruthless, small, “If she’d open the door.”  
  
If Nesta opened that door, it went unsaid, Cassian could and would protect her from anything in this world, including herself, including their High Lord. 

Cassian wasn’t so upset as to imagine Rhysand would _hurt_ either sister- Rhys was Rhys, even living out days as his worst possible self- but that didn’t change the fact of his casual dismissal, his simmering aggression.

Azriel’s honor and Cassian’s heart: they couldn’t forget it.  
  
Heaving a sigh, Azriel walked forward and tried to touch the door.  
  
The effect was instant- the effect was staggering. A thunderclap of power that rang through his ears, the only coherent thought Azriel could summon was _fuck. Fuck shit fuck, that’s the entire house, that’s all the warding thats-_

Nesta Archeron stuck her head out the cracked open door, visibly white-knuckled grip on the handle reminiscent of a shield. “ _There_ you fucking are.”  
  
Cassian was on her in an instant, a solid wall of gentle, _bleeding_ concern, shouldering Azriel out of the way. “Archeron, hey. _Nesta,_ are you okay?”  
  
He reached out, tried to put a hand on the door, and _rebounded_. Painfully. A lattice of lightening and the instant smell of singed skin.   
  
Not the wards.  
  
The House. Rhysand was going to hate this.

Cassian swore- Cassian missed the shudder of pain that rocked Nesta’s hand.   
  
Absolutely registered- _Azriel sympathized, Azriel didn’t have time for this-_ the way that Nesta ignored him completely to focus on Az himself. Pinned him with those hypnotically infuriated eyes- and Azriel folded himself back. Wings small, neck bared. Met that gaze and inclined his head- before reaching up to grab him by the collar.   
  
Azriel had the grace to let Nesta physically haul him inside- she smelled like _fear,_ terror, complete and deafening.  
  
It escaped no one’s notice but for perhaps Nesta’s herself that the House- listening, loving, sensitive as a mother- allowed Cassian to follow, smoothly shutting the door behind him like he wasn’t also audibly clenching his jaw.  
  
“How long is too long?” Nesta hissed. The air was made of panic, a lightening storm contained in these walls. _“How deep is too deep?”  
_  
Elain lay crumbled on a chaise, a colorless cloud of unspeakable power. 

Hushed, soft, Cassian swore.   
  
The effort of it locking her joints, Nesta let go of Azriel and moved aside, no longer a sentinel between the two Illyrian’s and her sister who looked, by all accounts, on the edge of death.   
  
Azriel knew she was alive.  
  
Azriel knew- _lost lost lost, dark deep found carried-_ even in the shadows now, Azriel could hear the sound of the sea that existed solely within Elain Archeron’s power.  
  
He didn’t know what it was, but that tide wasn’t water.   
  
He’d been afraid she was like him- Azriel had failed to imagine that the Cauldron had rendered her something even worse.   
  
“How long?”  
  
Nesta shook her head, more agitation that denial. She wore her feelings like an Illyrian, in every inch of her body, kinetic in rage. Cassian couldn’t look away. “Eight hours? She was _talking_ earlier, but not- it was like she wasn’t there, in her body. She _wasn’t_ all there. It was like- like how we were trained to speak, as children.”  
  
Past. Present. Lost.  
  
The waves crashed, a league deep in Elain Archeron’s soul.  
  
“How were you _trained_?” The promise of retribution, bloody as he could make it, hovered on the edge of Cassian’s voice.  
  
If Nesta took offense to it in the slightest, it didn’t show as she snapped, “We were noble daughters, how do you _think_ we were trained? To be pleasant ornaments.”  
  
Cassian nodded. Information swallowed, knowledge of every painful thing that meant absorbed. Cassian cocked his head as he stepped closer, focus keen as blade. But kind, so kind Azriel could tell he was bleeding for it, “So she sounded like”-  
  
“Like every bit of what makes her _Elain_ was gone, _yes.”_ It was a hiss, before her face snapped back in her sisters direction. “Azriel. What do you know? What do you hear?”  
  
A bare inch behind her shaking spine, Cassian’s hand was outstretched- comfort or to catch her, Azriel didn’t know _because Cassian didn’t know-_ a ferocious, feral longing that said he wanted to help. He wanted her to say his name.  
  
Azriel closed his eyes.  
  
“She’s not like me.”  
 _  
“Az.”  
_   
He had to ignore Cassian’s sympathy, Nesta’s directionless rage- he had to go deeper. He couldn’t wade into the depths without hurting her, and Azriel would have died himself before he allowed that.  
  
He opened his eyes.  
  
Nesta Archeron didn’t even need the words. “She’s not coming back.”  
  
Azriel swallowed around the lump in his throat- he was so angry, angrier than he’d been at himself in centuries, _he’d failed-_ and watched her rock back into Cassian’s hand as though she’d known it was there, the most natural thing in the world. He was sure she didn’t even notice.

“She _will_ ,” Dark, too cold, Azriel sounded like shit to his own ears. “I can’t go after her. Not without harming her. She’s sunk deep in her power- not gone, but inside herself.”  
  
“Her power,” Nesta said, quiet, hollow rage, “We don’t even know what her power _is._ ”  
  
She wanted to draw blood. Azriel would have let her.   
  
“No,” He said, just as empty, just as firm. “I’ve never felt anything like it. But she’s there, and she’s unhurt.”  
  
Nesta grimaced, biting her own lip. She didn’t appear to register the pain- notice that her newly sharp high fae teeth tore her mouth bloody, healed and re-tore.   
  
“She’ll come back,” Cassian was saying, low, resolute, ducked into Nesta’s space, “She’s your sister. She’s an _Archeron_ \- you’re warriors.” Knuckles down the notches of her spine, pure, unmitigated respect. “You’d fight your way back to her. Elain will do the same.”  
  
An enormous breath heaved from her bleeding mouth. “But we’re _immortal_.”  
  
Azriel, who’d knelt, taken the opportunity to check Elain’s pulse, to pretend he could garner anything _useful_ from contact, knew what she was saying. “It could be any time.”  
  
“ _Right,_ ” Nesta snarled. “Like Feyre bothering to return from fucking Spring. It could be a day. It could be a year. _We have nothing but time.”  
_  
In her voice, it was a curse.  
  
Azriel rose to his feet. “I have eyes on Feyre every second of every day. I can get her out, the moment an exit is needed.”  
  
Nesta scoffed, blood and fear, rage and pain, “If you have so many agents in Spring, why is she even there?”  
  
There was a strange war happening on Cassian’s face: concern, pride, burning interest. “She couldn’t see another way to get us out. It was a sacrifice- staying is…her own tactical choice.”

If their faces got any closer, Azriel was going to need to leave. _  
_  
“ _Tactical?_ She’s nineteen years old, she’s a hostage to the man who kidnapped her. Twice.”  
  
Her pain was wounding him, but Cassian was also trying very hard not to smile. “She’s going to burn it all down. I don’t _agree_ , I’d extract her myself if I could. But she’s our High Lady- I have to respect her choice.”

He needed her to understand- Cassian couldn’t circumvent the power of his Court. But Cassian would do anything- anything else she asked of him.   
  
But the noise Nesta made couldn’t have come out of a human mouth- too growled, too raw. Savagery made magic, power wrought of pain. This was what the had called the House to wakefulness, primal as the stone that watched. 

“She is _not_ my High Lady.”  
  
Shadow yelled: _she’s going to get herself killed, she already got us killed, we’re all going to die, I can’t be the only Archeron, Elain, Elain, Elain-  
_   
Azriel wasn’t surprised when Nesta Archeron summarily threw them out, the House of Wind shuddering around her. 

***

Once, for the first hundred banished years, Lucien had been obsessed with the scent of Autumn’s air. Halted crisp, never progressing naturally past that misty bite of morning. Perennially held between late bounty and decay, the endless smell of leaves and flame, golden dry and evergreen deep.  
  
Hawthorne, oak, willow, and smoke. 

Immortals might have minds that could weather eternity, but even memory faded.  
  
80 years more, and the cool- _never truly cold, never truly enough to feel anything_ \- morning of a solstice in Spring brought nothing but bitter longing. Lucien could almost pretend: blood red leaves beneath his feet, blood red hair caught in combs of bone, blood, red, on his hands. 

He didn’t need to pretend now.  
  
Faebane stopped everything: the spark of Lucien’s heart, the fire in his blood, whatever insane thing Feyre seemed to mean when she said she could _call for help when it passed._

But it couldn’t reach out to touch ambient magic- couldn’t stop the might of this land that did not forget, that cursed and found devotion in equal measure, the rustle of the trees: _seventh daughter’s seventh son, Vanserra of the bloodmoon, Vanserra of the free-  
_  
Pain melted away.   
  
Lucien couldn’t heal himself, would suffer the poisoning long and steady- but Autumn would care for those it loved.

He should have known there’d be no coming home, not without blood and disaster hanging over his head.  
  
Lucien couldn’t find it in himself to care. 

Rivers of emerald, clear bonfire air. Death, hovering in the threat of every step toward hidden refuge- Autumn had always hurt, and that was half of why his heart held it so sacred.

If he died- a very real danger, Hybern’s long reach, Tamlin’s rage, the baying hounds of Beron’s inner court, the thousand things his sole companion in this insane dash was _lying_ about- Lucien would die like the forest fire he’d once been- by inches, in miles, destroying into rebirth as he went. 

Vanserras didn’t burn out.

***

Faebane was only used sparingly in the first war- Hybern hadn’t understood how to control the effects, had weakened just as many of their own soldiers in the process of poisoning enemy troops.  
  
They’d been refining it now, for more than four hundred years.   
  
That was what Azriel had to remind _everyone._ What he told Cassian’s wild eyes. What he told Morrigan- white, shaken, horrified and saying _we lost her?  
_  
Feyre wasn’t lost- Feyre was running, hiding. Her magical signature not extinguished- scrubbed from the world, leaving grey smears of Hyberns favorite, _horrific,_ resource. She was alive. She was in _Autumn_.  
  
City wards shifted, held safe in Amen’s grip. Morrigan, swearing that if Rhys returned first- _if Rhys tried to leave again_ \- she’d take him down if need be. Cassian and Azriel, in the air.  
  
Azriel didn’t breathe the fact that Feyre wasn’t alone- didn’t acknowledge that he even knew it until he found himself racing across a sky of ice, following the scent of fire.  
  
They’d made it Winter- and they weren’t alone.  
  
Fire flared over the frozen lake, each shade just a little different to Azriel’s eyes. Four of Beron’s sons- three on the hunt, one bleeding in the cold side by side with Feyre Archeron.  
  
In action, Cassian and Azriel rarely needed to speak.   
  
It was understood that Cassian- faster in flight, bound by different rules- would get Feyre out of the icy wasteland. And Azriel, who could disable opponents without touching them, would handle the sons of Autumn.   
  
One ran. One locked in combat with Lucien Vanserra. One smart enough to pause at Feyre’s triumphant, hasty reveal of untouchable power.  
  
Azriel slammed to the ice, clobbering with careful aggression but not lethal force, the eldest son of Beron as he went.  
  
Too complicated to kill the son of another ruler on any day- far more entangled in the laws and magic of Prythian here, standing on the land of court neither of them belonged to.  
  
The action left him face to face with Lucien Vanserra, the brightest thing in this whole pale place, staring at him in furious disbelief.  
  
There was blood on his teeth.   
  
In his hair, across his bruised face, but it was the nearly feral, obscenely beautiful red grin that drew Azriel in.   
  
The blazing gold in Lucien Vanserra’s eyes as he kept smiling, even as he snarled, “What the fuck did you do that for?”  
  
Azriel could hear the burst of mirth from Feyre’s explosive joy over his shoulder,allowed him the second he wanted, to look between the figure before him and that man’s brother, laid out by both their hands. “Did you want to kill your own blood?”  
  
Lucien laughed- and it didn’t sound like Feyre. It sounded like the world was the joke, and Lucien the punchline- fragile kindling and hungry spark. “You think I count that piece of shit as _family?”  
_  
As if in punctuation, the third brother- youngest of the invading force, a good seventy years Lucien’s elder, _the fucker who’d run at the sound of wings-_ winnowed a step behind Vanserra, weapon raised.  
  
Azriel had been ready. But Lucien- _Lucien moved faster_ , a gold red blur that spun in place to slam the hilt of the knife in his hand against the smaller man’s temple, blood bruising into ruddy hair.  
  
“ _Traitorous trash,_ ” He managed to hiss, before sliding to the ground, unconscious.  
  
“Osian,” Lucien greeted, calmly, and kicked him in the ribs.  
  
Azriel fought the smile tugged at his mouth, and said, “We have to go.”  
  
“Do _we_?” Lucien threw the Autumn-made dagger in his hand like it was trash, blade skittering across the ice. “I did hear little Fey. _High Lady-_ you know, I’ve been nearly beaten to death this week by one High Lord, don’t think I’ll try for another.”  
  
Cassian was picking up Feyre, they had seconds- Autumn could burst from over the border, the latent safeguards of the Winter boundaries could trigger- Azriel really, really did not feel like fighting a polar bear today, for all that he was fairly certain Lucien Vanserra might come at one with nothing but his teeth and win.  
  
“You won’t be harmed,” Azriel promised, lowly. _Recklessly._ “But we don’t have time for this.”  
  
Lucien bent, liquid fast, and stole a hair ornament from his bloodied brother’s body. “ _You_ don’t. Kal is very fond me, you know, used to call me Uncle Lu when Bran was still Lord. Had a wee little lisp.”  
  
Azriel grabbed one corded forearm and pulled.  
  
It stopped the talking- _the stalling-_ but the light in Lucien’s golden gaze seemed to coalesce, burning hotter still.   
  
Instinct took over to haul Lucien into his arms, long limbs heavy with strength folded against Azriel’s bulk. Shadows keened quiet, nothing but, t _hey’re coming coming coming._ Vanserra, apparently, didn’t give a single shit that another man was carrying him.  
  
It would have been easier, to hold him closer, as they took off across the sky.   
  
Made easier, as Lucien Vanserra leaned his bloody face against Azriel’s shoulder, body leeching something much more bitter than surrender. “What are Night Court prisons like, Shadowsinger?"  
  
The clouds over Winter’s frozen kingdom were colder than ice- undulled by the ferocious heat of Lucien’s body.   
_  
“Azriel.”  
  
“Mhmm?”  
  
“_My name is Azriel,” The words came out bitten, half lost in the wind, but Vanserra nodded.  
  
“Lucien Vanserra,” He said, needlessly, red mouth twisted into that devouring grin. Azriel could hear every proceeding thought: _exiled, lost, formerly, fucked. “_ So, prisons. There’s an island, isn’t there?”  
  
“No one’s throwing you in prison.”  
  
Lucien leaned his head back, a cascade of red blowing in the wind. Tangling. Filling the air with the scent of sparks, fire made holy. The lost son of Autumn, who looked every inch like he belonged to that storied, ancient kingdom.   
  
Who would inherit it, some century, and hope it wasn’t a death sentence.  
  
There were goosebumps on the bared expanse of his throat, sun drenched brown skin utterly exposed from face to navel through the ruin of his shirt.  
  
Azriel made the effort to hold him more steadily. Closer. High Fae were not built for the sky- much less this treacherous journey north.  
  
So it was to his throat that Lucien finally spoke again, leagues later. Gravel, a forcibly wryness that did nothing to hide exhaustion from Azriel’s senses. “I’ve always been told Illyrian’s don’t lie.”  
  
Wingbeats, echoing one another, filled the silent space between sly, careful words. “But I know who you are, and you know who I am. I think we both know damn well Rhysand can do literally whatever he wants to me, without a single Cauldron damned consequence. So, if we’re off to my execution, I’m hoping your honor is present enough for a warning.”  
 _  
Without a single fucking consequence._ He heard the full meaning- _no home, no Court, nothing but my own skills to protect me from the most powerful High Lord in Prythian. Pissy, mind melting shithead-  
  
“_If I did, would you try to escape?”  
  
A laugh, rough enough to be real, rattled beneath Azriel’s chin. “From the Shadowsinger of the Night Court, an Illyrian warrior, in midair?”  
  
Illyrian said simply- not a curse, not a fearful oddity. A fact.  
  
“You could winnow.”  
  
Lucien snorted. “And have you pull me back in through darkness, where there’s no air to breathe? Rather not arrive at fucking Rhysand’s feet gasping and trussed like a turkey, thanks.”  
  
Azriel didn’t know why he was talking.   
  
“You might be faster than me.”  
  
The laugh grew in size, echoed in Azriel’s ears. “Are you _bored,_ shadowsinger? Not enough threats in the North to try your skills against?”  
  
“You were winning, against Oberon.” The truth, not a compliment. He’d have killed him, if Azriel didn’t interrupt the fight.   
_  
What the fuck did you do that for?_ Lucien had asked - Azriel’s answer was all honor, more Illyrian than anything else. More heart than logic, bewildering in the aftermath of action- he’d stopped him, in case Lucien didn’t want it. On the off chance this already bloodied man didn’t want further the death of kin on his hands.   
  
If Oberon hadn’t gone down easy, Azriel might have killed him _for Lucien_. Harder, on winter soil. Justifiable, an attack against the High Lady of another Court.  
  
Not a comfortable thought, but he could tuck it away. The knife in the dark, the dark itself: Azriel was long accustomed to doing what must be done, paying the cost for others.  
  
He’d thought, _complicated._ Ignored the drive that included his own useless emotions in the reasoning.  
  
“Oberon’s sole talent is killing without conscience,” Lucien drawled, blithe fire extinguished. “He’s Beron’s personal executioner- used to victims restrained.”  
  
Azriel knew that- _Azriel hadn’t been thinking.  
_   
“And Osian?”  
  
They were close to the border, yawning wildness of the Middle present in curious currents that danced in ways air shouldn’t, teasing at his wings. Azriel told himself that was why Lucien’s warm breath felt shocking, the feel of it twisting beneath his breastbone.  
  
“Is there a point to us telling each other only things we already know?"  
  
Azriel could feel the motion of his mouth.  
  
“You stole something out of his hair.”  
  
Ribs against ribs, more than four layers between them, Azriel’s body built in totality to withstand the cold of any sky, Lucien Vanserra burning like a star in his arms- Lucien Vanserra, who thought it was entirely possible _Azriel was carrying him to his death.  
_   
None of the panic reached his face, but that didn’t mean Azriel was free of it.   
  
“Is that an admission _you don’t know_ something?” Lucien purred, delighted despite the darkness hanging around him that only Azriel could fathom. “Night Court spy craft has such a vaunted reputation, is _asking_ the usual approach?”  
  
“Asking,” Azriel growled right back, low and heated, _insane,_ “Is reserved for allies.”  
  
Lucien’s teeth audibly clicked together, the tiny sound lost in the wind but not to Azriel.   
  
Silence carried them North, all the way to the secret heart of the Court of Night.  


***

Azriel knew plenty about Lucien Vanserra.  
  
Bright, dangerous, a quarter of the way into his third century. The banished heir ofthe Autumn Court, the most lethal flame in a long line of dangerous, skilled High Fae. Hated by his contentious, power-hungry father from _birth.  
  
S_even sons born to Sorcha Vanserra and Beron of the Bloodwood- but Lucien was the sole heir to his mother’s house.  
  
Feyre called him _friend._   
  
Possessed a genuine if _tangled_ fondness for the man- felt no compunction not to draw him unwitting into her destructive punishment of Spring, mourned for and knew only a shred of what it had cost him.  
  
Not for the first time, Lucien had borne punishment for trying to help the youngest Archeron.  
  
What Azriel learned, without the help of long told tale or shadows whisper: children laughing in the streets, enough to bring tears to Lucien’s eyes.   
  
Nothing but a weary breath in reaction to Morrigan flinching at the sight of him, red gold of his family undeniable.   
  
He was uninterested in standing up for himself, bewildered by the prosperity of the Night Court- but neither of those things stopped him from snapping at Rhys.   
  
Rhysand, manipulation clear, unhidden and effective: _your mate.  
_  
The crack of a whip, Lucien Vanserra’s voice in correction: _Elain.  
_   
They locked him in the House of Wind, close enough to detect her wellbeing, forbidden to even catch a glimpse of her face.   
  
Feyre wanted him safe- _Feyre wanted him to love her sister_ \- Feyre also wanted him ensconced a thousand miles away from Elain, if possible.   
  
Elain Archeron’s real voice in memory, keen, unsoftened by absence- _six years past my majority. Are faery ages so very different?  
_  
Azriel’s gaze found Cassian’s, the complicated expression on his oldest friends face easy to discern. Cas would throw himself headlong into the fight if Lucien Vanserra proved a threat- but he wasn’t finding anything to object to aside from Feyre’s tone and all that it implied.  
  
Slow, barely perceivable, Azriel shook his head.  
  
White teeth bared back, Cassian grimaced over Feyre’s head, the thought clear.  
 _  
Nesta.  
_  
Lucien was younger. Freer. Unimaginably dangerous but also, in every way that counted to High Fae, more valuable: a court’s heir, even banished. A man who’d publicly acknowledged what Elain was to him the second it was apparent, without hesitation.  
  
Azriel could _hear_ the reasons stacking behind Cassian’s eyes.   
_  
They were the same species._ Lucien Vanserra belonged to nothing and no one- could give himself completely to the middle Archeron.  
  
Firmer, enough that Amren’s sly gaze caught it, Azriel shook his head again.  
  
It was lost, in the rising tempo of Feyre’s list of rules.  
  
Invisible to their High Lady, Cassian shut his eyes.  


***

Little Feyre Archeron, _High Lady of the Night Court.  
_   
And what a Court it was.   
  
Lucien had been locked away in palace so old it was sentient, the warm walls laced with power that spoke a language beyond comprehension. He couldn’t detect any curses- the lingering mark of spellwork to listen, power breathed into watchful shape.  
  
There was nothing but the soul of this place- wardcraft and reckoning.   
  
He was very nearly certain they were _royal_ quarters; blue and silver echoed here and there, everywhere casually, conspicuously lush.  
  
Diplomats told stories, emissaries like Lucien had been. The few who weren’t treated to Keir’s unspeakable hospitality, his suffocating carved city- the few who were actually allowed to see the High Lord of Night met Rhysand in a palace of moonstone, strung in the sky.  
  
It was a legend.  
  
It was, apparently, one of many.  
  
And why wouldn’t it be? Lucien huffed to himself, checking windows and doorways, lintels and beams for hidden spells. The Night Court was more than three times over the size of Spring, double Autumn’s land.  
  
Rhysand could have a thousand palaces for all he knew.  
  
A thousand cities, tucked in safety.  
  
The only place in all of Prythian wholly untouched by Amarantha’s hands.  
 _  
By Hyberns.  
_  
Infuritating. Admirable. Feyre was happy to the point of tears to be home- Lucien couldn’t imagine, even loving the man, how she could ever trust Rhysand.   
  
His whole life was a _lie.  
_   
And not a small, diplomatic untruth. Not the kind of lying that existed between all Courts, to hide their secrets and sacred places. Rhysand had given himself a monster’s face, done monstrous things- and proceeded to live a second life, like those things didn’t exist.  
  
How much did Feyre _actually_ know?  
  
What could possibly be worth the cost of Kier? Of legendary Illyrian brutality? Of the Prison?  
  
The Amren walked around draped in gems, lovingly swearing like someone’s grouchy Aunt. Rhysand had given half his throne- at least in name- to a teenage girl.   
  
The Shadowsinger of the Night Court, who looked at though he were hewn of granite- ice, marble, immovable, flawlessly rendered- had called Lucien an _ally.  
_   
But Lucien was the enemy here.  
  
That much as clear.   
  
Lucien wasn’t sure what pissed him off more- Rhysand saying _your mate_ , like a woman he’d met for all of ten second’s was a _belonging_ , all of Feyre’s court apparent looking at Lucien like he was about to fight his way through them _to claim Elain as a possession,_ or the clear fact that Feyre’s older sisters were just as cloistered as Lucien.  
  
He’d bet the scarce handful of gold that had somehow survived in his pocket- Feyre lived in that quaint little lie of a house with Rhysand, pretending to be normal.  
  
Her sisters had been transplanted here: this empty, _enormous, absurdly magical place.  
_  
No obvious traps to be found, a space that felt like it hadn’t been occupied in years. Utterly empty- filled with power. _  
_  
Sprawled on the immense, opulent bed in his quarters, it crawled over Lucien’s skin. How unbearable, how strange must it be for two people newly fae? Fae, without their consent.  
  
Was it not enough that Hybern- that Tamlin, _Lucien would burn that man alive, he would, he’d broken all of his promises already, nothing could stop him now_ \- had taken everything from them?  
  
They were alone, in a world that didn’t belong to them. Violated beyond what Lucien could imagine and left in the company of a pack of faeries powerful and deadly. Alien.   
  
And Rhysand couldn’t bother to house them in his _home?  
_  
Lucien knew he was a _liar_. A man who’d bare any cost- but to know he really was without even a shred of honor made him want to melt these stone walls.  
  
He wouldn’t. Lucien would play the game- for now.  
  
If only because that ice-cold, intriguing statue of a man had promised him safety, and Illyrian promises had weight.  
  
If only, more importantly, because Lucien was sick enough at the thought of Elain and Nesta Archeron surrounded by people they’d perceive as monsters.  
  
He wasn’t about to become another nightmare. _  
_  


***

When Azriel finally slipped away to have a drink he was desperate for, days later, relaxation remained out of reach.  
  
In the corner of the quiet, well-worn comfort of a pub that Azriel alone of the Inner Circle knew of, sparks of his power dancing around his downturned face, sat Lucien Vanserra.  
  
Gilded gold in starfire lamplight, rendered the brightest thing in this room by his garnet hair. The shadows didn’t need to warn him- Azriel found him instantly. Observed for just a second the practiced motion of Lucien sipping from a tumbler, a long slow, swallow.  
  
Azriel disappeared into the shadows.  
  
Came back to being in whisps of smoke and blackness, in the seat across from Vanserra.  
  
The fucker smiled. Leaned back, looking down the sideways tilt of his own beautiful face to stare at Azriel. Not an ounce of shame. “Shadowsinger.”  
  
Azriel should have taken him back to the House. Disabled him, winnowed, locked him away, doubtless returned to bribe the extremely grouchy phouka who owned the bar into ever serving Azriel again.  
  
Told Rhysand Feyre’s rules had been broken. Told Feyre, his High Lady.  
  
He was tired.  
 _  
He was so fucking angry.  
_  
No amount of sparring with Cas or working with his people, contingencies and plans and violence that made Azriel’s world- nothing had tempered the rage, like the taste of blood in his mouth at what the Archeron sisters had been reduced to, at Rhysand’s reasoning and plans.  
  
He’d _failed._ They’d all failed, and more was coming.  
  
Hybern grew stronger every fucking day, and Azriel couldn’t even protect their family. Feyre’s older sisters? In crisis, in pain, hurt in ways that required something very different than Feyre asking Rhysand if it was possible the Cauldron had _broken Elain’s mind.  
_   
Morrigan, nearly as bad but helping the only way she knew how- and about to be paralyzed by the corner Rhys would push her into.  
  
Cassian, preparing the Illyrian army. Preparing for the funerals he’d bare the fault of in his heart for centuries to come.   
  
Eris _. Keir._  
 _  
There was always another way.  
_   
Azriel could spend his time in much better ways than coping with the fallout of Rhysand’s anger and whatever Feyre came up with to further alienate the powerful, _unbound,_ faery she herself had brought home.  
  
Flame of the House of Vanserra was without equal- they were about to fight a war.  
  
Out numbered. Outmatched.  
  
That was what Azriel told himself as he quietly insisted, _“Azriel.”_  
  
Lucien huffed a little laugh, the emotions that whispered, teeming around him wiped away. “You here to drag me back, _Azriel?”_  
  
Hidden, but not from Azriel: _fear, longing, loathing, bitter, longing, longing, longing. A purpose, a place, a single smiling face to trust, a single breath of Autumn air-  
_  
Lucien sighed around that sharp-edged smile, “I don’t suppose you’ll let me finish?”  
  
The motion- _the thought_ \- telegraphed clear. _  
_  
Azriel caught Lucien’s wrist before he could throw it back, poised in midair. Shook his head. “After I have a drink.”  
  
Azriel let go. Nodded politely to the pixy barkeep who’d sent over his usual, and set enough gold down for more than both their orders. It vanished.  
  
Lucien Vanserra was _watching._ “I have money of my own.”  
  
He’d already guessed this- Vanserra was dressed in new clothing. Soft but sturdy, Night Court made fabric shaped as close to Autumn style as it could come, Spring formality utterly discarded.  
  
Azriel shrugged, impassive.   
  
It was nothing- nothing, but Lucien’s brows came together, a real expression rather than the tease of one.  
  
All he said was, “You need your wardings looked at.”  
  
Alone and quiet, his power had sparked the air. Face to face with Azriel, his gaze was liquid gold. “You can feel the city?”  
  
“I can feel every bloodspell the North decided was worth fucking with,” He drawled, “But I’m talking about that empty formal _nightmare_ where I lay my head.”  
  
Azriel wanted to say- _What can you feel from the stone?_ Wanted to ask, _what shape do the wards take for you?  
_   
Azriel knew he was trapped, _felt trapped_ , and that was the very opposite of a new feeling for Lucien Vanserra.   
  
He said instead, “The House of Wind. The wards are…flawed?”  
  
A scathing noise, directly into his drink as though Lucien couldn’t help himself. A wet, pointed smile. “House of _Wind,_ portentous. Thematic. _Naturally-_ yes they’re flawed, do you know how I escaped your High Lord’s hospitality? _I walked out the front door._ ”  
  
Azriel lied. “You weren’t warded in.”  
  
He had been. He had been and in the two weeks since Elain Archeron’s lucidity had slipped away, no on had been able to access either sister until Feyre herself tried. The House was awake- the House was listening, and not to her High Lord.  
  
The hallways smelled like _fire_.  
  
Specifically- like a wildfire started by the strike of lightening, burning through undergrowth in ancient Illyrian forest.   
  
Like Nesta Archeron’s reborn skin.  
  
Cassian had made it as far as the space outside their door- Azriel caught him sleeping there. He couldn’t even blame him. It was so much less of a _problem_ than Rhysand’s growing hatred, the way he refused to temper his reaction to what was, in the end, power neither woman had asked for.   
  
“A test? Mhm, while that is Fey’s style, it is not, I think _Rhysand’s._ ” Amber liquid swirled in glass, gilded light lost as night began to settle over the misty harbor on the other side of the pub’s windows. “The House is alive- Rhysand needs to tithe it enough blood to hold steady. Or it’s going to pick and chose who it protects.”  
  
Azriel took a long, burning sip. “You sound like you care about the safety of the Night Court.”  
 _  
Are you going to stay? Are you going to fight? Will you burn down the legions of Hybern with us?  
_   
“I care that those two have already been kidnapped one time too many, and something _changed_ in their making.”  
  
Azriel agreed- it hummed over his skin, released the trapped, violently still breath that been rattling his chest for _days-_ but still, he said, quietly, “You want to protect Elain Archeron.”  
 _  
“Fuck you_ ,” It was a snarl, automatic. Not, Azriel immediately realized, for the expected reason a mated High Fae male might snap at the very sound of a name in another’s voice. “ _Fuck, god, all of you assholes._ She isn’t _mine._ She doesn’t belong to me- I met her _once._ You think I’m going to do anything to make her life worse? _Fuck off._ I want her safe because she deserves to be safe, just like she would if I didn’t exist.”  
  
Azriel didn’t point out that he did exist. That he’d claimed her, publicly. Azriel had only pieces and other’s perception- but the shadow sang _longing_ and the dark insisted _misery.  
_  
The idea of love- not loving obsession. Loyalty. A soul-deep sense of _cost.  
_   
Lucien Vanserra, a valuable player in the game. Lucien Vanserra, in his own head: a flawed, dangerous burden.  
  
“It’s the right thing,” Azriel said, gravely.  
  
“ _Yeah it fucking is_ ,” Lucien bit out, looking for the first time, away. “All her sister’s enemies, all of mine, all of Rhysand’s- she inherits them all.”  
  
The wrong thought, the true one, a world without war: Azriel would hunt down all those enemies, one by one, solve the problem with this man by his side. Lucien Vanserra, who also knew how to pay the price.  
  
His words lied so much less than his face tried to.  
  
And even then, that smile said _come closer, fucking find out._ Blood red danger- honor true and rare as gold.  
  
Azriel finished his drink.  
  
Lucien rose on long legs, coat pulled rakish by hands plunged into deep pockets. He was unarmed, one rule obeyed. Azriel wondered if that had to do with the terrible smile, the melancholic face in quietude- in Lucien Vanserra’s mind, his very being was a weapon.  
  
There was so much fear, in all that unshaped longing.  
  
He followed Azriel wordlessly.  
  
Fog off the ocean lingered deep in this part of Velaris, light fighting the oncoming blue tinged tide of darkness. He wanted to breathe it in- salt and home, fire and ocean. He had three hours to sleep, before scouts from the continent were due to check in.  
  
Azriel tipped his head back, let himself absorb a single breath that was mist and peace, before gazing at the loom of the House of Wind all the way across the city, watchful in twilight.  
  
Lucien was already looking when he turned back.  
  
Face inscrutable- _shadows gone quiet_ \- and glowing in the faded light, Lucien reached for Azriel’s hand.   
  
The world was smoke- the world was hushed forest darkness, _alive, alive alive_ \- the world was righting itself to the view of Velaris from the opposite direction, looking down from the ten thousand stairs.  
  
Lucien had winnowed them both.  
  
Azriel could have stopped him- Azriel hadn’t. _  
_  
He also silently noted, but didn’t ask, how exactly Lucien had already discovered the precise, 423rd stair where the ward against winnowing was sunk.   
  
He could have flown up. He could have spent this moment on the necessary threats that Lucien listen to Rhysand and Feyre. _He could have done his fucking job.  
_  
Azriel walked beside Lucien up the immense staircase, watching as the rising moon bled the red from his hair.   
  
“The House is _ancient,_ ” Lucien said, some thousand steps later, accent deepening the words, “But the stairs are only- eight hundred years old?”  
  
“From the time of Rhysand’s father.”  
  
“Rhain,” Lucien mulled over the word, dragged out the name. “Beron still used to curse him, even in _my_ childhood. Always thought I would have liked to meet the man- but his taste in   
_architecture-_ did you know him?”  
  
The question, casual as it was, hurt. Lucien was asking idly, not even the usual way his questions had a dozen linking thoughts that whispered on the periphery of Azriel’s awareness.  
  
Lucien Vanserra wasn’t _thinking._  
  
Just walking- some small part of him pleased by the full moon- breathing in ocean tinged air, just a little closer to Azriel’s side than High Fae manners would deem appropriate.  
  
“I knew him.”  
  
The only father Azriel ever had- not his, and not loving, not exactly- but the man who’d taught Azriel every valuable lesson he’d needed to survive.   
  
Who’d taught Azriel to trust and make his own honor, here in the dark.  
  
He was answered by a small, thoughtful noise. It was an invitation to keep speaking- Azriel had a hundred reasons for not taking it.  
  
But- but at the doors, a whisper of shadow ensuring they opened silently, Lucien turned back. Looked up, bright eyes, sly smile, hair a dark river over his shoulder. “If I’m not warded in,how’d you find me?’  
  
Azriel could find any person alive, with sufficient effort- but that wasn’t one of the more publicly known skills of a shadowsinger.  
  
“Why’d you pick that bar?”  
  
That ruinous smile broke into a realer grin. “I like… _quiet,_ ” Lucien Vanserra said, shrugging one shoulder, “Looked like a place where no one would care what I was- and it smelled like _cinnamon.”  
_  
The last word was laughed, small.  
  
Azriel owed him an answer for that, rooted in place down to his hollow bones, heat helpless across his scarred skin that carried the scent of warm spice.  
  
“You were in my favorite pub.”  
  
Lucien met his eyes, and _laughed._   
  
“Really?” He dipped his head, halfhearted mockery of a Spring bow, “Good taste in common then. Azriel.”  
  
Azriel looked at him, the silent response to his own name.   
  
Not all High Fae eyes flipped back the dark like an Illyrian’s. Luciens, born and made, burned right through it. So it was by both the moon and his own light that Azriel could see the crinkle of his brow. “Am I saying it right? _Azriel._ ”  
  
He didn’t let his face move. Wouldn’t allow his wings to twitch- Azriel’s cheeks were _burning._  
  
“Yes.” _Yes and who the hell are you to make sure? Who ever bothered?  
_  
Reply was knuckles rapped, pleased, against the hulking door where it hung open, a monolithic reminder _they should not be talking._   
  
Azriel’s senses could only be blocked out so much,gift and burden to know the secrets of a persons soul; he could find nothing truly treacherous about Lucien Vanserra. But he couldn’t allow that to be _trust_ \- not when that feeling was far from shared by his High Lord.   
  
Drawing back into the night, Azriel said, “Don’t get caught.”  
  
Lucien hummed in reply, seemingly watching the places where darkness touched Azriel and lingered, _enveloped_ , without a trace of disgust or fear. “No point, you’d catch me.”  
  
He pulled the great doors shut, said what might have been, in that soft-rough burr that was his natural tone, _good night.  
_   
Azriel couldn’t tell if the words were really spoken, or if the impression of Lucien’s thoughts were what reached him. He was already more shadow than man.  
  
Even the dark, as the door swung shut, smelled of fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lucien: I am a burden without a court, I am fucked- will expend what I can to make sure Elain is safe because I've made her life even worse...I am...not even slightly ready for this, but if she needs someone by her side I will be the best for her possible, I will give it a chance-
> 
> Also Lucien: She's just a kid, why the fuck is she alone with just her sister in this nightmare house? what the fuck Rhysand? WHAT THE FUCK FEYRE? WHO THE FUCK WAS GONG TO TELL ME ILLYRIANS ARE BEAUTIFUL. Who the fuck does this asshole think he is?? THAT STERN THAT STUPID HANDSOME FACE FUCKING CARRYING ME


	3. (the way you slam your body into mine reminds me I'm alive) but monsters are always hungry, darling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Your love isn’t a weapon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: brief discussion of sexual assault

  
Feyre wanted a family dinner.  
  
Reason enough to leave the little house she and the High Lord played at being normal citizens in and decamp, whole bloody Dream Court, into the palace where Lucien was imprisoned. Returned the sisters who’d briefly made a home there right back to where they’d started.  
  
Lucien overheard the planning- but knew it was happening when the House very suddenly woke.  
  
Shuddering, magic moving, alive and angry as, he’d imagine, Nesta Archeron herself was, to be ordered to attend. All the ancient place could offer a soul so seething it wanted to shelter and please her: power, right on the edge of awareness.  
  
Warning, to every male under her roof.  
  
The High Lord had to be loving that.  
  
Lucien, who’d spent the last three days in perfect isolation, had made his own deal with the House. Bled a little and let it taste- if anger could be a siren song, Lucien had rage to spare and fire to gladly contribute. If the House of Wind truly turned and ate the High Lord of Night and his repulsive, sycophantic little Court, Lucien might just help.  
  
Help…save Azriel, at least.   
  
Nesta Archeron would protect her sister.  
  
It was to her, after all, that the House had decided to give its loyalty.  
  
Didn’t care so much for Lucien, too male for its tastes. But the wards enjoyed having food; Vanserra blood richly good for many things other High Fae could not accomplish. It was Lucien, solely left, who could use that power for wardcraft.  
  
Lucien alone, in the House, who convinced it he was an ally to be allowed to move with ease in the shadows.  
  
It helped too, that those shadows seemed willing to help him avoid the Morrigan.  
  
He’d been feared for many reasons in his three centuries. Many of them justifiable. Born to a monster, raised monstrous to survive that mad, dangerous father’s hatred. Vanserra, blood of the moon, blood of the hunt- blood of Lucien alone of his brothers, a legacy spelled in clear letters.  
 _  
He’d been born dangerous._  
  
It was new, however, to be flinched at for this: the color of his hair.  
  
The only visible trait Lucien shared with his third brother, and Eris had more gold. Paler fire, lighter skin, a wholly different face- the very damned image of Beron.   
  
Eris, who’d never laid a hand on Morrigan, the single kindness to a fiancé he hadn’t wanted in all his centuries of wicked violence. 

To say Lucien had questions was an understatement- to say he understood even slightly Morrigan, the Sword of Night, Golden Truth, one of the most powerful women in all of Prythian planning _dinner parties_ for her High Lady, was laughable.  
  
Lucien, of course, was not asked to attend.  
 _  
Ally,_ the shadowsinger promised.   
_  
Enemy,_ Lucien’s heart answered.  
  
Magical interference by the House itself or strange quirk of the airy architecture; Lucien didn’t need to attend to know every word said. He could sprawl on the floor in the small library a floor above, drink oddly terrible northern whiskey, and listen as the whole wretched night carried.  
  
Enemies- could any person, if the High Lady’s own sisters couldn’t expect warm welcome- not be counted on the long, long list of people against this Court?  
  
He had the unfortunate certainty he was going to find out.  
  
The only ally Lucien really had at the moment, the House itself, still kept to it’s own love- smothered in silence rather than allow the echo to announce the storming stomp of Nesta Archeron’s steps into the library.  
  
She caught sight of Lucien, laying on the floor, and _growled._  
  
Said, chest heaving, eyes burning with otherworldly, ungodly, unfathomable fire, “Don’t go downstairs.”  
 _  
Don’t go bother my sister, you faery prick._  
  
Lucien sat up at slow, human speed. Replied with bare honesty, “I wasn’t planning on it.” When it became clear Nesta wasn’t moving- was she hiding from Feyre? From the High Lord who hated her? From the Illyrian who haunted her steps but whose honor apparently bent enough not to come to her defense?- offered, “Drink?”  
  
Cauldron help them both, Nesta nodded, a jerk of her proud neck. “Pour me one.”  
  
Lucien poured the woman a drink. Left it on the table and retreated back to his corner, putting more than two yards between them. She didn’t move until he was out of reach.  
  
Grimaced, gulped, eyes like molten metal, power the rage ofa whole burnt out world. Lucien could taste it- heady, unbelievable, beyond comprehension.  
  
He’d never been particularly cautious, wanted to know- _Gods, what the hell was she?_ “Are you pissed she wanted to hit on you, or was the Morrigan’s dress really that bad?”  
  
Nesta slammed down the glass, squeezing her eyes shut. She had to have heard the crystal shatter, the table beneath it splintering- but there was no reaction to Lucien arresting the motion, a quick soothe of magic to fix what was broken before it all shattered.  
  
“ _I tire_ ,” Nesta Archeron hissed, a nightmare, “Of hands ripping the clothes off my body.”  
  
Lucien, raising his own glass to his mouth, stopped. Froze. Set it down as a ripple began, undeniable, across the golden surface. “Me too.”  
  
Her eyes flew open. “ _You too_?”  
  
Ravaged. Enraged. She thought he was mocking her.   
  
There were many things Lucien could have done. Told the truth- trapped, powerless, Courtless. Weapon, monster, always in danger. Could have just admitted it again and waited, because Nesta Archeron was not even a quarter of the fool her sister was.   
  
Lucien could have done a lot of things, but he took the most direct, stupid route, and stood.  
  
Pulled off his shirt, and turned. Said, face to the wall, voice true and bitter death, “My refusal was noted. Punished.”  
  
Whip marks unhealed but no longer able to bleed- the fresher, deep marks of the cost for dismissing Inathe, of Lucien’s recklessness, clotted but painful, slowed further by faebane exposure.   
  
It would be weeks still, before Lucien was whole.   
  
Nesta Archeron’s voice didn’t shake, but her breathing did. “Here, or there?”  
  
Lucien shrugged on his shirt. Turned and tossed himself once more, insouciant, to the ground. Wondered, distantly, what it might be like to loved by a person who burned so deeply, brightly- did that stupid fucking coward General have any idea what he was _playing_ with?  
  
Death promised for hurts to Lucien, a man she despised. Or, at the very least, didn’t trust. What would Nesta do for someone she truly cared for? What would war bring, to this woman who’d been remade from dangerous to godly?  
  
Lucien wasn’t sure he would have wanted to tangle with her _mortal.  
_   
And, he _quite_ liked that about her. “Spring.”  
  
The clack of sharp faery teeth.  
 _  
What a faery_ Nesta Archeron was. Lucien had been the unfortunate witness of Feyre’s adjustment, from the screaming nightmares to the bodily horror- did any of those idiots downstairs bother to offer any comfort to this woman, who made _such_ a glorious faery?  
  
He doubted it.  
  
Doubted she’d accepted it. Doubted even more anyone thought to offer it when her control was already this good- this utterly, completely, dangerous.  
  
“Is that why you left?”  
  
On the floor was good. The distance, Lucien suspected, was the only reason she’d remained at all. Tilting his head just right- not aggression, _never_ responding violence- but a flash of bared throat, was even better. “I wasn’t given much of a choice.”  
  
A candle blown out- just as suddenly as she’d arrived, the power glow faded from her eyes. Grey-blue, tired, normal. _Who the hell was she?_  
  
And as though she’d been waiting for it, Nesta squared her shoulders. Pulled that rigid spine even straighter, turned to leave.  
  
But, small victory to Lucien, tossed savage over her shoulder in goodbye, “Much, or _any_?”  
 _  
None-_ it lay on Lucien’s tongue, heavy in the silence once again left alone.   
  
He’d fight for Night when they pressed him into it to survive, fight Hybern anyway anywhere that would take him. Monster and then _monsters_ \- Hybern who had tried to burn their whole continent once, who wouldn’t be pleased until mortal and fae alike of Prythian existed in brutal subjugation.  
  
Lucien would always fight, no matter how tired he was of it all.  
  
Another very large whiskey later, Lucien ruled it safe to wander back to his own rooms. The High Lord surely knew he was ignoring their rules- the wards were, at least nominally, Rhysand’s, for all that the ancient things didn’t seem to like him. Feyre would throw a fit if she found out. But what could she do?  
  
Lock him up? Again?  
  
Feyre Archeron had already done her worst to Lucien, and he understood that now. The nightmares, the crying, Tamlin’s _fury-_ if that was the reward of friendship, Lucien could surely live without her companionship.   
  
He was also, perhaps, more than a little tipsy.  
  
Even by his standards.  
  
Which he would later pretend- at least a little- was the reason for what he did next.  
  
Trapped in a hallway by the sound of Morrigan’s voice and Feyre’s laugh, an open door ahead and Azriel alongside it, already half faded to black, Lucien chose the darkness. Slid to stand next to Azriel, wrists bumping wrists, shoulder slamming against shoulder harder than he’d meant it.  
  
Azriel pulled him, wordless, into the shadows.  
  
The dark swallowed them whole.  
  
In the fathomless night sky- in the shadows, were the shadows Azriel too? Or did they simply obey? Listen, as good magical resonance did, with something like love?- Lucien let out an unsteady laugh, chuckling.  
  
Not quite in his control, sparks escaped with the sound, floating in the nowhere with them.  
  
“Good dinner?”  
  
Azriel, the only distinct _anything_ in the darkness and flame, gave him a particularly stone faced look. “The best. I love poached salmon.”  
  
Steady, blank- and Lucien choked on a laugh. Rocked back, realized he could still feel the wall behind them as much as he could the solid line of Azriel’s body. Not carried away- carefully hidden. “Sounded _excellent_.”  
  
The hint of a snicker, swallowed. A slump, so slight Lucien wouldn’t have felt it if he weren’t pressed so close  
  
It shouldn’t have been a surprise to feel the warmth- the faint gust of Azriel’s breath, the heat of his body- but it was. Stone-cold, perfect beauty. Did people forget there was living man beneath that control?  
  
“So,” Lucien drawled, letting his head thunk back against the stone he couldn’t see, “Let me guess. You never, ever, let anyone you want to fuck meet your friends.”  
  
There was the laugh- real, rich depth, laden in words. “Who says I’m fucking anyone?”  
  
He absolutely did not peek sideways at the infinitesimal twist of full lips. Did not press a little harder against the arm only in alignment with his because Azriel was leaning down. “Seems like a waste.”  
  
Azriel snorted.  
  
In delight, Lucien stepped away from the wall. Bounced into the dark to round on him, right in that perfect face. Vision swimming just a little- maybe he really was drunk, too drunk to move that fast- as Azriel came to his full, prodigious height in front of him. “And who did you leave in Spring?”  
  
The shadowsinger could play the game.  
  
“On the contrary,” Lucien purred, like the words wouldn’t hurt, holding sparks in his hand, “Feyre made it quite easy for me, having killed and skinned the only man I was willing to let touch me in the whole damned place.”  
  
Ice to stone, stone to steel, right in front of his eyes.  
  
Lucien was already shaking his head before Azriel could say anything, regretting the truth instantly. “It was…a while ago. And not love.”  
  
Fathomless depth- the dreaming dark, those black, beautiful eyes- Azriel said, “Doesn’t have to be love for loss.”  
  
“No,” Lucien pulled forth a little laugh, rubbing a hand over his aching jaw. “Rhysand and Feyre obsessed, Morrigan busy pulling a runner, Nesta with a very large and careless shadow- and you just… _don’t_?”  
  
Like Lucien wasn’t both saying and asking terribly personal things, Azriel reached out. Waiting, a soft, hushed second, until sparks floated from Lucien’s burning grip into his scarred hand. “That’s not what I said.”  
  
Wryness clear this time- did those assholes know he was _funny?  
_  
Lucien wanted to pretend not, to imagine it was just for him. He was very, very drunk.  
  
“No, I mean,” He gestured into the dark, the shadows the wrapped, friendly around the hand extended into nowhere. “This is _yours._ Your work is yours. But what’s?”-  
 _  
So what’s your place? Where do you belong? Yourself?_  
  
He didn’t expect Azriel to answer the sentence abbreviated, the tangled thoughts.   
  
But he did, with a rustle Lucien belated realized was wings, invisible in darkness, black as the shadows. He wondered what it was like to fly. Wondered- wondered-  
  
“I _do_ ,” Azriel answered quietly, pinning Lucien in place with his gaze, each word careful,“And I look. But I don’t bring them here. There’s no one and no place, that…matters. Not yet.”  
  
Not yet- not yet, had someone melted the ice, slid between those hollow bones. Not yet- Lucien had loved in his youth and paid the terrible cost, but asked for years and years later, had it been real?  
  
Not yet.  
  
Lucien was smiling. “As long as you don’t let Morrigan chose for you.”  
 _  
Azriel smiled back._ “Feyre. She’s very interested.” He heaved a sigh, funny as it was real, “Pity she can only fathom attraction between men and women.”  
  
“I did hear her explain you and Cassian to Nesta as… _brothers._ ”  
  
He wouldn’t have believed it if it wasn’t happening right in front of his face, but Azriel rolled his eyes. “Brotherhood. She’s not wrong.”  
  
“She’s not _right.”  
_   
“Learning?” Azriel offered, hand run through his curls, fire light shining gold on the glossy black. _  
_  
Lucien’s laugh was a giggle, but he’d deny it. “All the wrong things.”  
  
“There will be time,” Azriel eventually replied, smile growing tight around the edges, somehow- _ridiculously_ \- despite the height difference, looking at Lucien through slanted, thick lashes. Lucien wanted touch them. Wanted them fluttering against his neck- his cheek- his thighs-  
  
Lucien was regretting losing track of the amount of drinks he’d consumed, having learnt a few days before that the library liquor selection always, always, magically refilled.   
  
“-after the war.” Azriel was still saying.   
  
Reflex, to grin back. Wisdom- hanging by a shred- not to sidle closer. “If we live.”  
  
“We’ll live.”  
  
Lucien’s mouth was open to reply, but Azriel interrupted him with a hand. The ghost of a touch on his elbow, the smallest tug. All at once, they fell out of the dark into torchlight, warm red halls, dim and lovely. “They’re gone now.”  
  
Lucien swallowed. Lucien did not look at the handsome face he could now see all the clearer, dark eyes and full lips, that mouth that could after all, laugh. Lucien nodded.  
  
Azriel, smile twisting in a smirk, nodded right back in farewell, and vanished.  
  
It was not until the morning, after having put himself to bed with the dawn, that Lucien remembered.  
  
The primary gift of the Shadowsinger: secrets and truth, to parse what is unsaid, and know, always, the speakers intention.  
  
Too late to be embarrassed- too trapped for regrets- Lucien _wondered._

***

Weeks passed between the idea and advent of the summit of High Lords, each day a new complication. Safety, planning, neutral ground: absolutely his duty and only half his problem, Azriel up to his neck in work, reports coming not of information but death, from every field.  
  
His people were being slaughtered.  
  
In mortal lands, on Hyberns shores, in the Autumn Court.  
  
Burning him in place, anger a more familiar feeling that sleep, than even the smallest victory.   
  
They couldn’t march without allies. Couldn’t parse who they _had_ as allies.  
  
Rhysand, half soothed and half all the more volatile with Feyre by his side, made plans in a vacuum. All Azriel could do was pull his people back, tug the chain of information closer and hope- because spies were people Rhys was willing to lose, and Azriel wasn’t.  
  
Days spun long and endless, strung each together tighter, Azriel found himself doing his duty as much as dereliction. He did the work- _the work never stopped_ \- but he also found himself when he should have been sleeping, should have been trying to make Rhysand speak or Feyre understand- instead staring at the sky.  
  
Standing in the shadows, with Lucien Vanserra, fearless, beside him.  
  
Thinking, when there was no fire in the dark, no report he hadn’t read over a sixfold with the hope the words would change, of Shahar.  
  
Of, for the first time in five centuries, what might have been.  
  
The life of a shadowsinger was a life of service. Freedom promised, bound, to live and be whoever Azriel wished, but for this: he _would_ serve. Rhain, the highest House of Night.   
  
Rhain’s second born, his daughter raised beneath the mountain.  
  
His chosen heir, one successful ruler to what might have been another. His very image: purple-eyed monstrous, heart locked like iron, born clever and quick and ready to lead.  
  
Rhysand’s heart bled into the wind itself, air around him that always _longed._ For home, for love, for a thousand things he buried behind a sneering wall.   
  
Shahar, even at sixteen, bled about as much as starsteel.   
  
She felt- _oh how she felt, a rage, Illyrian red in the shadows, the mountain peak had shuddered_ \- but it didn’t hurt her to hide. 

Shahar would walk into that airless mountain city without flinching, go down a thousand steps every day at her father’s side; this young woman who’d hung a night sky of diamonds down her hated wings, whose spine never once wavered.   
  
Black as night, harsh as lightening.   
  
A half-Illyrian child who’d be a High Lady worth following.   
  
And Azriel would have followed her to the death, to reforging of their world. It was what he had been born for. Alyssar, Lady of Night, found it to be good fortune: the only Illyrian shadowsinger to ever exist, a weapon gifted by the whispered mountain gods to protect the first Illyrian High Lady.   
  
Because that went without saying, because his loyalty was blood and Rhain had given him _freedom_ \- to speak, to fly, to live- Azriel only had one question the day he’d asked about the Night Court’s future. “Does Rhysand know?”  
  
Rhain, silver haired and purple-eyed, power in sharp bones, raised one gleaming brow.  
  
A lesson then- and clear answer. 

If Rhys didn’t know his place, it was because he refused to. And Azriel himself had reported enough back to his father for that to be apparent too: Rhysand longed for _Velaris,_ for the sea, for royal attention.

But he wouldn’t have it for that exact same reason. For Velaris, not the capital, not the where power lived. For a more outright declaration of fatherly love, not _duty-_ not the honor the High Lords son had already been given.   
  
Rhysand had been gifted over a full third of an empire, the most dangerous armed force in Prythian, and he didn’t even realize it.  
  
Would only understand in just a few short years, an older Azriel knew, what his father had done. When Rhys became Lord with no warning and had no _alliances,_ no grace of power beneath the mountain, no diplomatic moves aside from the ferocity Illyria taught him.  
  
No presence in the nobility but one he’d compile as a role to be played. A lie for the world, based in Rhysand’s most secret heart, on what his father had valued in his sister. 

Ruthless. Immovable. Beautiful and terrible.   
  
Rhysand, whose magical might was monstrous, who’d been born _powerful_ but not for power. To be in a room with Shahar had felt like the bones of world had gone molten, would bend to her will- for Rhys it was the dark, a nightmare you knew would come.  
  
Rhain’s fault, Rhysand’s fault, _the fucking war’s fault_ \- while it had been on his mind, Azriel didn’t realize exactly why Rhysand reacted to Nesta Archeron like his life was being threatened, until the summit.  
  
He’d been too busy with watching the Lords, ashamed that was what it took- diamond dust on her cutting sharp cheeks, unbent, _immovable,_ holding the eldest High Lord with her voice and eyes alone.  
  
Presence, power, a dark dawn on a broken world.  
 _  
Rhys, god damn it.  
_  
That simple, that terrible, just another problem Azriel would have to handle: Nesta Archeron reborn pulled enough magic she threatened Lordship, something older, something _wilder,_ and when Rhys looked at the might he saw Shahar. He saw a sister he’d failed and loved and never understood why had been favored above him. He saw power that should have saved Feyre. 

Denigration, wound old and new.   
  
Later, after vows pulled him into a worthless fight, after Morrigan had looked at him with shadows that keened _fear fear fear,_ after he had to watch Rhysand smirk at Cassian following Nesta out of a room as though pulled by a string- Azriel actually managed to get a moment alone with his best friend.  
  
A rooftop, Dawn’s misty night a calm that neither Illyrian felt.   
  
Wings dangling, elbow propped on one draw up knee, Cassian managed to look at him without cringing.Azriel knew damn well what he looked like right now. “Helion is going to back us. Kal too, if Vivienne has anything to do with it.”  
  
Because it was Cas, Az let himself say, “Feyre wants to fuck him.”  
  
Cassian snorted. It almost covered the lightening fast, knee-jerk of a thought so fervently expressed shadow caught it. _Better her than Nesta.  
_  
Azriel managed to shove to the periphery of his awareness the full color, loud re-play of Nesta’s dismissal. The air sang with it anyway. _Glorious fucking nightmare, murderous grace perfect and not mine not mine not mine she won’t even look at a High Lord what am I-  
_  
“Cassian.”  
  
The smile was rueful. “If you finished the hit against Autumn we’d have less to worry about.”  
  
Closer to what he’d come here to say, to the one person he could tell the whole truth to. “You think Feyre knew what she was doing?”  
  
“Fighting Beron?” Cassian shook his head, dark eyes flitting to a darker horizon. “With _water._ She’s got good instincts, but she’s thinking like a mortal. He’ll burn out her heart next time she tries before she can summon the power.”  
  
Four fingers drummed against Truthteller’s sheathe. The air echoed the noise, one two, one two, twin hearts beating.   
  
In the dark, in the quiet, Azriel looked too toward the North. “What are we going to do about Rhys?”  
  
Because it was Cassian, the answer came readily, blunt and honest to the open sky.   
  
“If I thought he’d actually listen? Put him all the way in the back. Keeps him out of the Legions way, incentivizes Keir to hold the fucking line. Move him through the phalanxes like we do heavy shielders in the waves. But”-  
  
He had to say what they both knew. “But without Mor, we need him further out.”  
  
Cassian sighed. “Give me five more Legions and I’d try to keep him off the field entirely.”  
  
A joke- the whole hammer of Illyrian might would crash against Hybernian steel. It would be a slaughter, an onslaught, every able-bodied soldier called beneath Night’s black banner. There was no one else, nothing else.  
  
“His head…isn’t in it.” Azriel quietly agreed.  
  
Like he had when they were young, Cassian tapped a rain gentle wing against Azriel’s shoulder, the silent message clear. _Go on. You can go on.  
_  
When Azriel didn’t say anything, Cassian hedged, the sort of smile in his voice that acted as a shield for the fact that he was just as worried, utterly aware, “He really is out of shape.”  
  
What Cassian meant, kindness commingled with truth, the same warning he’d tried to give Feyre: Rhysand wasn’t in fighting form.   
  
Might not be back to what he’d been for a long, long time. Amarantha dead, Feyre in his life- balms, but not bandages. Rhys was still bleeding from wounds that wouldn’t heal for centuries.   
  
He wasn’t _ready.  
_  
And it showed.   
  
Secrets kept from them all, reacting less as a man responsible for thousands and thousands of lives and more one who was already fighting like an animal caught in a trap: thrashing bloody, no personal cost too high.  
  
Rhys was planning, _but he wasn’t thinking._ They’d protect their Court- go down fighting for their friend, even if they had to protect him from himself.  
  
“The wings,” Azriel ground out.  
  
Cassian huffed. “You know it was for Feyre.”  
  
“Does it matter?” Azriel could feel Cassian’s gaze on him, concerned for the sheer exhaustion in the words. He addressed the fog bellow. 

“ _Show up as our true selves_ \- like we need another goddamn reason not to be trusted. Beron tells Keir, Keir waits until the Legions are gutted, until Rhys is exhausted, and the High House becomes contested for mixed blood. Again. Tell me you can think of something we could possibly do to save Feyre and Rhys both but take out Keir and his sons if there’s a battlefield challenge.”  
  
It went deeper, and they both knew it. Keir, who led every powerful High Fae family beneath the mountain. His poisonous wife, who’d been Amarantha’s _friend._ Four direct blood heirs. Two younger brothers. Eighteen cousins. The whole putrid Veritas line, intertwined with Autumn like aconite laced steel.  
  
“Who else can control the darkbringers?” Cassian sighed, answer enough. “She’ll never forgive us. Better to go after Beron.”  
  
Better to start another war, than make Keir pay for his crimes before Rhys was strong enough to back them.  
  
Azriel could have blamed the tiredness. The rage riding him like an old friend. The familiar, perennial way he’d been looked at like a monster for fulfilling bloodbound vows. But when he spoke it was just this: the truth, as the world entrusted it to him, as Azriel always knew. 

“Lucien could do it.”  
  
This time, the collision of wings was pure recoil, accidental and sudden. “You want to talk Vanserra into killing Beron? Az, that’s s _cold_ ”-  
  
Azriel was already shaking his head. “If we can keep him on our side, he could lead the entire High Fae contingent. It’s all power- Keir’s line is the only one with enough magic. It’s not a blood contract. The darkbringers are wardbound to their command once the banners fly.”  
  
Low and thoughtful, eyes a little too knowing, Cassian tilted his head. “He can throw around that much power?”  
 _  
You would trust him? You already trust him_?

Azriel shut his eyes. “He dreams of light through the canopy. All those centuries beaten by Tamlin, power in him sleeps, but it’s waking up.” _He wanted to kill the Lord of Spring, rip out his fucking throat for what he’d done to Lucien, to Feyre, Nesta and Elain_ , “He doesn’t even know.”  
  
“Anyone ever seen him fight?”   
  
“None of ours, but,” _He moves like the wind, like fire, like_ \- Azriel wanted to tell Cassian every stupid thought, wanted to swallow down and crush to death the entire feeling. Too tired for control, jaw aching from clenched teeth. “He’s fast. Lethal. Vanserra fire melts bone.”  
  
A flame to burn through the dark. Weighed down, Azriel half wanted to walk into the heart of that power like a pyre, if only to feel warm. 

Alive. 

Awake.  
  
“Good thing Fey brought him home, pity she seems to _hate_ him.” Cassian snickered but went on, softer, quieter, “You’re not sleeping.”  
  
“Are you?”  
  
They both knew he already had the answer, but Cassian said it anyway. Sleep meant nightmares, one great leap closer to the brink he wouldn’t let himself fall to yet. “I know…I know the snap isn’t real. Not physically. I know when the Cauldron killed her it didn’t _break_ her, but I hear it in my dreams. Broken bones.”  
  
Azriel swallowed his own mess of feeling to slam an less than gentle hand against Cassian’s shoulder. 

“You didn’t hurt her. You won’t.” 

_Your love isn’t a weapon._

And then, in the face of Cassian’s audible swallow, “She’s going to destroy her enemies someday. You put yourself on Nesta Archeron’s list, and she’ll rip out your heart, Cas.”  
  
“Doesn’t need to grab for it,” Cassian drawled, automatically.  
  
“Absolutely no one but Nesta isn’t aware of that.”  
  
Belatedly, Cassian hit him back, with perfect precision that made his entire left arm go numb. Grinned like the asshole that he was as Azriel hissed back a curse, but sadness was there, a present worried weight in his bright eyes.  
  
“She does know. We’re not- I’ll help her kill anyone she needs to, bring her Hybern myself if I get a chance. Nothing else matters right now.”  
 _  
I can’t burden her with this.  
_  
Azriel hadn’t been born ambidextrous, but he’d been trained into it like all Illyrian warriors. So it was easy to pop what was, this time, a real and bruising punch to Cassian’s arm with his other hand.  
  
“You’re not a burden.”  
  
An old conversation, as well worn as the callouses on their hands, repeated as many times as the suns rise.   
  
“And you’re not a fucking monster, Az. Not responsible for whatever Mor is doing either.”  
  
A tread retraced, a road that didn’t end- a thousand times true. Azriel was bound in blood and promise to the High Lords of Night. Been bound, in the same breath, a compulsion of magic as well as honor, to watch over one young girl Rhain had imagined would one day marry Rhys.  
  
A promise he’d failed.

If Azriel wasn’t watching Morrigan’s back, no one was, and the last time he’d looked away the cost had been higher than could be repaid.   
  
It was only to Cassian he could say it. “What the hell are we going to do?”  
  
And like a thousand fights, five hundred years in his eyes, Cassian grinned. “Fight. What we’ve always done. Die in the skies with the wind at our backs if we have to.” He slung an arm over Azriel’s rigid shoulders. “Maybe..have something to come home to, this time.”  
  
Azriel said nothing.

Watched as the foggy night grew darker, clouds shifting to block out the stars.


End file.
